The Teduray and Their Polity

The political organization in Teduray society is not hierarchical. Each inged (neighborhood) of subsistence groups may have a leader who sees to the clearing of the swidden, the planting and harvesting of crops, and the equal sharing of the rice or any other food produced from the land. The leader or head also determines, in consultation with the beliyan, when to move and clear another swidden settlement.

Teduray society is governed and kept together by their adat or customary law, and by an indigenous legal and justice system designed to uphold the adat. An acknowledged expert in customary law, the kefeduwan, exercises legal and moral authority. The expert presides over the tiyawan, the formal adjudicatory discussion before which cases are brought involving members of the community, for deliberation and settlement.

The kefeduwan’s position is not based on wealth, as there is hardly any economic stratification among the traditional Teduray. It is not a separate position or profession, because he continues to carry on the usual economic activities of other menfolk in the community. The most learned in Teduray customs and laws, possessing a skill for reasoning, a remarkable memory and an aptitude for calmness in debate, and “who learns to speak in the highly metaphorical rhetoric of a tiyawan,” is apt to be acknowledged as a kefeduwan.

In one inged, there may be more than one kefeduwan, and several more minor kefeduwan. The main responsibility of a kefeduwan in Teduray society is to see to it that the respective rights and the feelings of all the people involved in a case up for settlement are respected and satisfied. The central goal in the Teduray justice system, according to Schlegel, is for everyone to have a “good fedew”, which means “one’s state of mind or rational feelings, one’s condition of desiring or intending.” The legal and moral authority of the kefeduwan exists for this social goal. Thus, the administration of justice is geared towards the satisfaction not only of one party in a case submitted to adjudication, but of both sides. This institution has made possible a significant development in the Teduray justice system. In the past, retaliation was deemed the acceptable means of seeking justice. But with the ascendancy of the tiyawan, retribution has been reduced to the payment of fine or damages.

This traditional system of justice is still followed, especially in the interior settlements where the old lifeways and practices persist. But like most of the other ethno-linguistic groups in the country, the Teduray are subject not only to the formal structures of local governments under national law, but also to the pressure of political change.

(Blogger’s note: This post is the seventh 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.)