The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) reports that there are at least 370 million indigenous people scattered in 70 countries around the world.

There seems to be no standard definition of indigenous people. Almost always however indigenous people generally refer to a group of ethnic people bound by a unique, distinctive, and long-cherished culture, customs and tradition and who inhabited a particular region or territory of a country through some historic claim but were marginalized in the process by the prevailing or predominant culture of the general population constituting the state.

Indigenous people are also referred to as aborigines, natives or cultural minorities.

Indigenous people are considered as among the most disadvantaged communities in the world. Many of them have been dispossessed of their lands occupied through historic title. Others are at the forefront of conflict involving access to natural resources in the place where they live. Their population has been constantly dwindling, or is even threatened of extinction, because of diseases, poverty, extermination, or colonization. They do not usually benefit or refuse to take part in urbanization, economic progress and cultural development because of the natural tendency to protect or safeguard their culture, ethnic origin and traditions. Until today, some indigenous people are predominantly subsistence-based and dependent on farming, hunting or fishing for food.

They say that many indigenous people have accumulated important knowledge and biological resources openly used for generations. But with the patenting system, some multinational companies took advantage of this knowledge and resources and deprived these native people the right to use their very own indigenous resources. This is known as ‘biopiracy’.

Consequently, indigenous people all around the world suffer discrimination, marginalization, oppression, and/or exploitation.

They say that as early as 1923, Deskaheh (also known as the Levi General), a statesman of Haudenosaunee (a group of native Americans originally consisted of five tribes: the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca), in seeking recognition for his people went to Geneva, Switzerland in 1923 to speak to the League of Nations (the forerunner of the United Nations) and defend the right of his people to live in their own lands under their own faith. 

Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, founder of the Ratana religion in New Zealand in the early twentieth century, made a similar journey to Geneva in 1925 to protest the breaking of the Treaty of Waitangi concluded with the Maori in New Zealand in 1840 that gave Maori ownership of their lands. Like Deskaheh, Ratana was also denied access.

The United Nations Human Rights Council finally adopted on June 29, 2006 the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which provides the right of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions and to pursue their development in accordance with their aspirations and needs. Some reports said that some countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand have been opposed this declaration because “no government can accept the notion of creating different classes of citizens.”

The Philippines has its own share of indigenous people like the Ifugao, Ibaloi, Kalinga, Dumagat, Aeta, Mangyan, and Manobo and about a hundred other cultural communities. The National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, or Republic Act 8371, are legally mandated to address their concerns and welfare.

In a speech before the Asian Development Bank on October 1, 2001, Atty. Evelyn S. Dunuan aptly said: “But today, when one speaks of indigenous peoples, it is not so much about their beautiful story as peace-loving communities bound to Mother Nature and Father Spirit of the Universe; nor their talents and skills and accomplishments. For the term indigenous peoples has been made synonymous to oppression, exploitation, discrimination and poverty. They, whose ancestors were once the proud rulers of this land, are now the scum of the earth, the so-called poorest of the poor in the Philippines.”

The perpetuation of a negative outlook of indigenous people is perhaps the worst form of ingratitude in a civilized society.