Bakun Folk Fight Large-Scale Mining

Bakun landscape

Our host warmly invited us to her home for 2 nights

Pila for dinner

Solidarity for the Bakun people's struggle

Communities in Bakun, Benguet are fighting to maintain their lifeways, livelihoods, and culture, as they confront the mining exploration operations of the Australian mining company Royalco. They are questioning the Free Prior Informed Concent (FPIC) which Royalco claims the communities have given them.

In order to call attention to their problem, Gambang community in Bakun volunteered to host one of the five celebrations of Cordillera Day this year. They mobilized their women, youth, elders, officials, and welcomed some 1000 participants and visitors from Baguio, Benguet, Metro Manila and other parts of the Philippines, Germany, Taiwan, Japan and the United States. 

We felt the warmth and vitality of the community folk from our arrival on April 23 until our departure on April 25. They shared their music which ranged from the traditional tallak (musical wooden rods) to original country songs with Kankana-ey lyrics, performed complete with electric guitars and drums. All expressed their love for their high mountains, the vegetable gardens, their small scale mines, and called for Bakun folk to guard their ancestral land. Each piece was outstanding, and earned the lively applause of the audience, some of whom were a bit surprised to find such musical excellence in a remote mountain barangay.

The Bakun women earned special citation from Congresswomen Luz Ilagan of Gabriela Women's Partylist, for their hard work in preparing for the Cordillera Day celebration, and their visibility during the program, on top of their other tasks as gardener, mother, wife.

Cordillera Day is indeed a rare occasion to show solidarity for the Cordillera IPs fighting for their land, life, and rights; a valuable opportunity to link up with community folk, to enjoy their music and dance to gongs, to go back to a simpler lifestyle if only for a few days; to recharge and regain some of that strength, as we continue in a protracted struggle for a better life. 

It is also a good way for city bred children to spend a few learning days during their summer vacation.