Indigenous Peoples Education (Day 11)

Indigenous Peoples Education (Day 11)

by Rey Laguda

(This is the 11th day of 50-day journey of DepEd Undersecretary Rey Laguda as being serialized here with his permission, culled from his Facebook account - Blogger/owner)

In the early 1990s, I have had the privilege of living for about 10 days with a community of Dumagat people in Nueva Ecija. I discovered a world so unknown to me and yet was part and parcel of being Filipino. My eyes were opened and my heart was exposed to a glimpse of the poverty and discrimination that they experience as a marginalized group. Since then, I have kept on coming back and also began to expose myself to other Indigenous Peoples (IP) communities all over the Philippines. Prior to joining DepEd, I was heavily involved in helping our Dumagat friends chart their future and an education intervention for their kids. I knew that there were needs left unaddressed and a cultural disconnect needed to be corrected.

Br. Armin Luistro, FSC points out that we “have been miseducated by a system that perpetuates cultural oppression… which we need to change to undertake reforms.” This is the context of push for the National Indigenous Peoples Education Program (IPEd). This response took its roots when the Department adopted the landmark policy framework aimed at making education more culturally-based and more accessible to IP learners, serving a key basis for operationalizing the IPEd-related provisions of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).