Graduation season marks yet another finished chapter in the lives of many. Year’s worth of book-based learnings and banked knowledge are filled in on a single roll of paper. Amid the achievements for the fresh graduates, however, the insubstantiality and vagueness of the education system remain.
Inaccessibility to education remains pervasive, especially when the state itself perpetuates and normalizes it.
Lumad student Chricelyn Empong states that it is hard to be a Bakwit as constraints continue to limit their access to education and compromise their safety and security. They had to constantly relocate due to the attacks orchestrated by the state.
“Pero, kasabay po noon ay nagpapatuloy po kami sa pag-aaral,” Empong stated.
Established in 2017, Bakwit Schools serve as their “highest form of expression,” entailing the Lumad youth to learn about their culture, agriculture, and how to defend their ancestral lands. Their curriculum consists of core subjects in agriculture, health, and academics. Likewise, the Lumad youth are altogether made aware of the social issues pervading the country today, and how to better assert their rights as indigenous peoples (IP).
Empong stated that their experiences in the Metro has been a challenge, a continuous struggle to fight through and assert militancy in defending their ancestral lands. She furthered that their current environment does not hinder them from doing the same things they used to do back home with the larger communities, however, she stresses the prevalent presence of limitations.
Despite these challenges, Empong highlights that one of the most significant things they do in their communities is to engage in collective action.
Empong, alongside 29 other Lumad students, is set to graduate on Saturday, July 17. When asked about her future plans after graduation, she stated being uncertain on whether or not it is safe to go back to their community in Mindanao or if they will be able to pursue further studies.
Lumad Schools have been around since the 1980s, initially as an informal educational institution as they have started mainly from teaching basic literacy and numeracy systems. In the 1990s, preschools and elementary schools were eventually established, and from 2003-2007, Lumad schools were then opened in five regions in Mindanao.
Due to the attacks and bombings by state forces, 178 out of 215 Lumad Schools have been shut down, undermining and repressing the Lumad youth’s access to education. Last 2019, 55 Lumad schools in Davao were closed down by the Department of Education (DepEd) after accusing the schools as training centers for the New People’s Army (NPA). In 2021, 26 Lumad students, volunteer teachers, elders, and staff were illegally detained during an alleged “rescue operation” in the Cebu City Lumad Bakwit School in the University of San Carlos (USC).
The schools’ closures have left 10,000 Lumad students out of school, and come their graduation day, only 30 students or less than 1% of all Lumad students are set to finish their studies.
Moreover, military presence in the communities also continues to engender a direct threat to their safety, as with the Lianga Massacre last June which claimed the lives of 3 Lumads, who were groundlessly labelled as terrorists. The state has pervasively cracked down on their right to self-determination, destroying their communities, and red-baiting their schools as a hub for recruitment of the NPA.
Amid the uncertainties, limitations, and insecurity, Empong asserted that what they are entirely sure of is their continuous struggle to fight for their rights in defense of their education and their ancestral lands, and to intensify calls to put an end to the regime that brazenly harasses and silences the administration’s critics.
The Bakwit Schools’ graduation and moving-up ceremony serve as an expression and proof of the nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented brand of education that the current Philippine state can never provide to the youth. With its sinister agenda of killing and harassment sprees on the IPs instead of ensuring the masses’ access to education, healthcare, and financial aid especially amid the pandemic, the Duterte administration has only made education more inaccessible and life-threatening to the Lumad youth.
“Hindi kailanman siya nakatutulong sa pag-unlad ng edukasyon, sa pagbigay ng trabaho, at iba pang batayang pangangailangan ng bawat sektor ng lipunan,” Beverly Gofredo from Save Our Schools (SOS) Network concluded.
SOS, alongside other sectors, continues to call to the masses to stand in solidarity with them to clamor in holding Duterte accountable for all the atrocities, killings, harassment, and human rights violations he committed.
