Minority Population Analysis: The Aeta of the Philippines

Minority Population Analysis: The Aeta of the Philippines This prĂŠcis uses a critical psychology lens for minority population analysis. Specifically, the prĂŠcis characterizes indigenous peoples and their vulnerability; researches the treatment of the Aeta, an indigenous people living in the mountainous areas of Luzon in the Philippines; and reflects on their experience of domination, marginalization, and exploitation.

Olivier Serrat 09/10/2020

1 When researching minority populations, critical psychologists examine identity categories (e.g., class, gender, race) and their mutually constitutive nature. They look into how minorities have been affected by power structures; what organizations (if any) support them; and what opportunities and limitations exist for them, especially in the educational, political, professional, and social realms (Crenshaw, 1989; Fox et al., 2009).

Characterizing Indigenous Peoples and Their Vulnerability Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups whose identities, cultures, livelihoods, and physical and spiritual well-being are interlinked with the land and natural resources of their territory and distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live (United Nations, n.d.; World Bank, 2019). There are 476 million indigenous peoples—and some 5,000 different indigenous groups speaking more than 4,000 languages—across 90 countries worldwide (Transparency International, n.d., para. 1; World Bank, 2019, para. 2). About 70% of all indigenous peoples live in Asia. European colonization, war, and natural disasters, explain much of the displacement that indigenous peoples have suffered over the last 400 years; more recently, development projects and especially logging must be blamed (Ashcroft et al. 2013; Serrat, 1994). Regardless, the outcome is that indigenous peoples have often become refugees in their own lands: they make up about 15% of the world's extreme poor although they only represent over 6% of the global population (World Bank, 2019, para. 2). All told, inequality and exclusion threaten their self-identity, vital knowledge systems, cultural survival, and—with dire implications for all including those who marginalize them—biodiversity custodianship (World Bank, 2019).

The Aeta of the Philippines Aeta (but Agta, Alta, Arta, Atta, etc. are other ethnonyms) is an umbrella term for the nomadic indigenous peoples living in the mountainous areas of Luzon in the Philippines, with small numbers in the Visayas and Mindanao (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The consensus of anthropologists and historians is that the Aeta migrated to Luzon through Palawan from Borneo, using a now mostly sunken land bridge, 20,000—30,000 years ago (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The Aeta are without doubt among the first—if not the first— inhabitants of the Philippines (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The Aeta have the small stature and frame (about 1.5 m or 5 ft tall), dark to very dark brown skin, dark brown eyes, curly hair, and small nose of the Australo-Melanesian ethnic group that inhabits isolated parts of Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The Spaniards who colonized the Philippines from 1565 called the Aeta negritos, the diminutive for negro. The population census of 2015 numbered 57,707 Aeta in the Philippines, most of them living near Mount Pinatubo in Zambales Province (Philippines Statistics Authority, 2015).

Comparing, the total population of the Philippines in 2015 was 100 million: most identified themselves as being of the Malay race and 92.0% were of Christian denomination (Philippines Statistics Authority, 2015). Of course, the Aeta are not the only indigenous peoples in the Philippines. The country boasts an estimated 14–17 million indigenous peoples affiliated with 110 ethno-linguistic groups in Luzon (33%) and Mindanao (61%), with a few groups in the Visayas (UNDP, 2013).

By tradition, the Aeta are hunter-gatherers who move in small groups of 1–5 families and build temporary shelters: therefore, adaptation plays an important role in their lives, which entails gaining knowledge of the tropical forest they live in and seasonal weather changes that affect its fauna and flora (Dahlberg, 1981). At age 15, most Aetas including women are trained for hunting and gathering using bows and arrows, dogs, knives, and traps (Dahlberg, 1981).

Fishing and food gathering are done by both males and females, much as swiddens for future

2 harvests although women do most of the harvesting (Dahlberg, 1981). In terms of gender, therefore, the Aeta are quite egalitarian. Storytelling helps spread social values among the Aeta (Dahlberg, 1981). But, theirs is a particularly poignant tale.

Domination, Marginalization, and Exploitation: The Aeta Experience From the late 16th century, the Indigenous peoples of the Philippines including the Aeta were progressively elbowed out. All forest lands were made to legally belong to the state, even though indigenous peoples had long inhabited them. In 1898, the United States secured the cession of the Philippines from Spain by force of arms and moved in. Under what President McKinley called "benevolent assimilation", the United States introduced the concept of property titles.

Over the years, deforestation, illegal logging, mining, and slash-and-burn farming by intensifying economic and other interests placed extreme strain on the Aeta: their attempts to secure tenure came to naught in the face of the wealthier and more politically astute lowland Filipinos.

Disliking violence and retreating from economic and political domination, especially land alienation, the Aeta never fought back, took refuge further up the mountains, and lost all selfdetermination. Then, rapid urbanization and private developers turned their diminishing forest settlements into virtual islands, impacting the deer, jungle fowl, and wild boar the Aeta depend on (Morella, 2015).

On June 15, 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted: this was the second-largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century after that of Novarupta in Alaska in 1912 (Gajanan, 2018). The eruption coincided with the arrival of Typhoon Yunya on June 11–17, 1991, which brought a lethal mix of ash and rain over the areas surrounding the volcano, burying banana trees, beans, corn, rice, sweet potatoes, and other root crops (Fuller, 2001). The Aeta moved to shelters in the surrounding towns, with families reduced to begging on the roadsides (Morella, 2015). Some were evacuated to distant resettlement camps (Morella, 2015). Soon, they were afflicted by measles and chicken pox, diseases they had not been exposed to before (Fuller, 2001).

In the wake of the eruption, the government and nongovernment organizations set up workshops for the Aeta, teaching them handicrafts. But, "How can you go into the jungle to get materials for baskets when you have nothing to eat?", an Aeta remarked in Fuller (2001). With nascent skills in agro-forestry developed through government programs, Aeta families support themselves by bartering jungle products with local traders in exchange for rice (Fuller, 2001).

Except as groundskeepers, household help, or janitors, finding jobs in towns is not easy because the Aeta lack the job skills of lowlanders. They do not know how to compete and most of them are illiterate. With government funds and donations, some Aeta have built concrete houses but huddle in native rest areas annexed to them: talking with L. Arboleda (personal communication, September 27, 2020), this is because they feel they cannot "breathe" in houses. Schools—sheds, really—have sprung up: Aeta children are taught in Tagalog—the most widely spoken language in the Philippines—with features of community education (Arboleda, 2020).

On account of newly-acquired literacy, the Aeta may one day become more involved in economic and political life, fight for their communities, better protect their land, and realize their interests. Meanwhile, as the Aeta become ever so slowly urbanized and "acculturated", travel agencies ferry tourists to Mount Pinatubo to see the beautiful blue and green lake that formed in its crater after the eruption.

3 Concluding Remarks It would be easy to say that the eruption of Mount Pinatubo accelerated the inevitable, meaning, that the nomadic lifestyle of the Aeta was destined to clash with development: but, racism and its negative effects explain more (Durrheim et al., 2009). "'Race' is a term for the classification of human beings into physically, biologically, and genetically distinct groups" and "[r]ace thinking and colonialism are imbued with the same impetus to draw a binary distinction between 'civilized' and 'primitive'" (Ashcroft et al., 2013, p. 218). Critical psychology locates individuals and groups in historical and social relations: from that perspective, there is no doubt that from colonial times to modern days the unique background, distributed mind, foreground, habitus, and interpretive repertoires of the Aeta set them apart from the lowland Filipinos (Durrheim et al., 2009). Henceforth, racism impelled their domination, marginalization, and exploitation with callous disregard for social justice, human rights, and well-being.

With the government offering no protection, land grabbing became the primary agent of domination, marginalization, and exploitation in the Aeta's experience. Eder (1994) noted that access to land is central to any discourse about indigenous peoples but that the Ancestral Domain Bill of 1987 failed to be enacted into law. Belatedly, in 1997, the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act passed key provisions on rights to ancestral domain, right to self-governance and empowerment, social justice and human rights, and cultural integrity and established a National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (Government of the Philippines, 1997). The Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997 was good news at last: that said, privileged elites and their political allies have for long found ways to circumvent the intent of legislation.

References Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2013). Postcolonial studies: The key concepts (3rd ed.).

New York, NY: Routledge.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8). Retrieved from https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 Dahlberg, F. (Ed.). (1981). Woman the gatherer. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Durrheim, K., Hook, D., & Riggs, D. (2009). Race and racism. In D. Fox, I. Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.). Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 197–214). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Eder, J. (1994). Indigenous peoples, ancestral lands, and human rights in the Philippines.

Cultural Survival Quarterly, 18(2).

Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Fuller, T. (2001, May 9). Philippine eruption snuffed out tribe's way of life: Pinatubo: 10 years later. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/news/philippineeruption-snuffed-out-tribes-way-of-life-pinatubo10-years.html Gajanan, M. (2018, June 6). 8 of the world's most dangerous volcanoes, according to experts.

Time. https://time.com/5300683/volcanoes-most-dangerous-active/ Government of the Philippines. (1997). Republic act no. 8371. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1997/10/29/republic-act-no-8371/ Morella, C. (2015, August 7). Philippines' Aeta people "beggars" in their own land. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/afp-philippines-aeta-people-beggars-in-theirown-land-2015-8

4 The People of the World Foundation. (2020). The indigenous Aeta people. http://www.peoplesoftheworld.org/text?people=Aeta Philippines Statistics Authority. (2015). 2015 census of population. https://psa.gov.ph/statistics/census/2015-census-of-population Serrat, O. (1994). Deforestation in the Philippines. Unpublished manuscript.

Transparency International. (n.d.) Indigenous peoples. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-wedo/indigenous-peoples/ United Nations. (n.d.). Indigenous peoples at the United Nations. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html United Nations Development Programme. (2013, July 24) Fast facts: Indigenous peoples in the Philippines. https://www.ph.undp.org/content/philippines/en/home/library/democratic_governance/Fa stFacts-IPs.html World Bank. (2019). Indigenous peoples. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/indigenouspeoples