50 Blaans undergo workshop on inter-tribal peace, development initiatives
By John Unson
KORONADAL CITY (August 27, 2022) --- Fifty members of the Blaan community just got capacitated on environmental protection, preservation of centuries-old peacekeeping practices and community representation in state-organized activities.
All 50 of them are from the Blaan-dominated Tampakan town in South Cotabato, about 14 kilometers from this city, the provincial capital.
Broadcast outfits here reported Saturday that the two-day workshop last week for Blaans comprising the Tampakan Municipal Indigenous Political Structure was jointly organized by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples-12 and a private benefactor, the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated, most known as SMI.
The SMI had produced in recent years almost 800 now employed professionals via its college scholarship program as one of its corporate social responsibility activities aiming to empower, through quality education, South Cotabato’s indigenous people.
The firm is funding the schooling now of 31,000 grade school pupils, high school and college students, according to Saturday's radio reports, quoting local executives in South Cotabato province as saying.
Domingo Collado, Tampakan’s Indigenous People’s Mandatory Representative, told reporters Saturday he and other tribal leaders in their municipality are thankful to the NCIP-12 and the SMI for embarking on the capacity-building workshop for 50 members of the tribe.
“It complemented our effort to educate our people that as Blaans we enjoy recognition and protection from the government as stated in the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, a law for us so important," Collado said.
In a statement released Friday, the NCIP-12 said the capacity-building workshop for the 50 Blaans was a big boost to its effort of helping preserve their cultural identity as indigenous people, being original inhabitants of Tampakan.
The NCIP-12 said two experts on cultures and traditions of IP communities in central Mindanao, Fred Basino and Romy Martin, were main facilitators in the recent two-day workshop for 50 Blaans from Tampakan, held in General Santos City.
Dalena Samling, a Blaan tribal leader, said the NCIP-12 and the SMI are cooperating extensively on protecting Blaans from exploitation and neglect by government agencies.
“We have peace and calm in our ancestral lands through the concerted efforts of the Tampakan municipal government, the police, the military, the SMI and the NCIP-12,” Samling said.
Samling and Collado separately told reporters Saturday the workshop they attended also upgraded their knowledge on environmental protection in relation to their expected extraction soon of copper deposits in Tampakan.
Mining experts from abroad and from the central office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources had placed at no less than $200 billion (in US dollars) the value of the copper deposits in Tampakan, awaiting extraction.
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