E/CN.4/2003/90/Add.3 page 8 5. Philippine indigenous peoples/cultural communities are defined by the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 as “a group of people or homogeneous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, become historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos.”2 6. Inherent in this definition are factors such as historical continuity, self-identification and group membership. The thread that weaves these factors together is the indigenous peoples’ attachment to land and territory. Nevertheless, it appears that there is no consensus as to exactly who are indigenous peoples in the country. Indigenous identities probably continue to be constructed and reconstructed amid demographic changes, political exigencies, and religious dimensions, particularly on the island of Mindanao.3 7. During the Spanish colonization, some natives of the Philippine islands became Christianized and Hispanicized, and in time they made up the majority of the lowland and urban populations of the country. Those people who resisted colonization and maintained their cultural, linguistic and religious identities, mainly in the hard-to-reach mountainous areas, became known as cultural minorities and, more recently, as Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples. In Mindanao they are collectively known as Lumads, whereas in Luzon the various indigenous peoples of the Cordillera are grouped together under the label Igorots. While indigenous peoples show diverse social, cultural, political and linguistic features, they live mostly in rural areas and depend mainly on swidden and wet-rice cultivation, hunting, fishing, gathering, trading and the commerce of handicrafts. In recent decades the effects of economic development strategies and globalization have been felt on indigenous and tribal communities with mixed results that have led to the emergence of human rights issues, which are the subject of the present report. 8. In pre-Hispanic times indigenous communities held land collectively, but after the Spanish conquest all lands became the exclusive patrimony and dominion of the Crown. The colonial government, applying the theory of jura regalia, known as the Regalian Doctrine, distributed land grants to private individuals but also protected, under certain conditions, the pre-existing communal holdings. The American colonial administration inherited this system and the State’s control over the public domain was reinforced, communal landholdings were not legally recognized and private land titles were issued in accordance with new legislation. 9. According to the 1935 Constitution, all agricultural, timber and mineral lands of the public domain, waters and minerals, coal and petroleum, and other natural resources of the Philippines belong to the State, and indigenous communities were progressively dispossessed of their lands. In 1957 the Philippine Congress created the Commission on National Integration, intended to foster the “moral, material, economic, social and political advancement of the Non-Christian Filipinos (National Cultural Minorities)”, by integrating them “into the body politic”, a process also referred to as “mainstreaming”.4 Section 5 of the above-mentioned Act establishes the Commission as the custodian and administrator in charge of the disposition of public lands in the provinces and regions inhabited by National Cultural Minorities for