The Teduray and Their Ancestral Domain

The Teduray are traditionally hill people of southwestern Mindanao. They originally lived in the upper portion of a river that drained into Cotabato.

Malay in physical features, with a dialect structurally related to those of the Malayo-Polynesian family (Schlegel 1970:5), the Tedurays call themselves etew teduray or Teduray people. But they also classify themselves according to their geographical location. The etew rotor are mountain people and the etew dogot, coastal people. The etew tran dwell along the embankment of Tran River and etew Ufi are those who live within and near the town center.

Historically, the traditional territory of the Teduray and Lambangian communities encompasses the area from Tuduk Tawan-tawan (now PC Hills [sic] in Cotabato City) down to the Slongon plain (Esteros–Tamontaka) to the Awang-Drikan mountain ranges in Datu Odin Sinsuat municipality; Dohon in Talayan; Firis in Maganoy, portions of Kawran in Ampatuan; and the entirety of Upi (north and south)—all in Maguindanao province. In addition, the Tedurays claim as their ancestral home Buayan in Esperanza and Binusugan in Lebak, both in the province of Sultan Kudarat.

This claim is based on the covenant made by Mamalo and Tabunaway, believed to have been done after the coming of Shariph Mohamad Kabunsuan in the twelfth century. The covenant was sacred and binding, and was thus strictly followed by the descendants of Mamalo, who remained as indigenous people or Lumads, and those of Tabunaway, who embraced Islam.

The Mamalo Descendants Organization filed their petition for the recognition of their ancestral domain for an approximate area of 57,850 hectares on February 15, 1996. Twenty-five community organizations of the Teduray and Lambangian groupings in the municipalities of North and South Upi in Maguindanao filed the claim, constituting only about ten percent (10%) of their traditional territory.

The Tedurays and Lambangians who constitute the leadership of the Mamalo Descendants Organization assert that they and their ancestors have lived in North and South Upi, Maguindanao since anyone of them can remember. The territory included natural and traditionally recognized boundaries, starting with Sitios Lantang and Keguko of Barangay Meteber in the south to Tuka Rubong of Barangay Resa in the west; from Tuka Rubong to Barangay Lagitan in the north, to Sitio Kenekar in the east; and finally back to Barangay Meteber in the south.

The ancestral domain is still rich in natural resources such as forests and minerals. But continued exploitation by big landlords and business concessions granted permits for mining operations may eradicate all these in time. For generations, the national government has exacted revenues from this extractive practice. Yet these profits were never translated into programs for consistent and efficient delivery of basic services to the Tedurays and Lambangian people.

(Blogger’s note: This post is the first part of a nine-part series on the Teduray people. Each part is posted every Monday starting October 6, 2014. The text is copied as it appears in Defending the Land: Lumad and Moro People’s Struggle for Ancestral Domain in Mindanao. The book, published by a consortium of non-government organizations, has an “anti-copyright” notice and may thus be freely reproduced.)