Quezon City, Philippines–Over a hundred leaders and representatives of Indigenous Peoples, attending the State of the Indigenous Peoples Address (SIPA) at the University of the Philippines in Diliman from July 26-28, 2009, denounced Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address as a sham which does not reflect their daily realities.

Manong Catalino Rutaquio, a Dumagat from Quezon summed it up. “There is a big difference between her claims and what we actually experience in our communities. The smiling faces of the IPs she showed are an isolated case, but on the whole, what we see something else. For us simple folk, there was no truth in anything she said.”

Arroyo claimed her administration had put much work into the 3 E’s- Economy, Environment and Education. But participants of the SIPA, noted that the E for Environment was conspicuously absent throughout the rest of her speech.

“She did not even mention her policy on large scale mining because she knew she would upset many people if she did,” said Manong Peter Duyapat, from Barangay Didipio in Nueva Vizcaya, an area which has lived with the ramifications of large scale mining since 1995. “I expected her to at least acknowledge her mistakes but she did not even apologize.”

And while the president got thunderous applause with her mention of the administration’s Programang Pantawid Pamilya, which facilitates cash dole outs to poor families, indigenous peoples claim it is being used in some areas to soften up resistance to mining and other projects. “The agenda of the Programang Pantawid is unclear to us. Not all the poor families in Apayao are given their share,” Manang Letty Sibuma from the Save the Apayao Peoples Organizations said. “The only areas given dole outs are those touted for large scale mining projects, because mining is a priority project in Apayao.”

“For us indigenous peoples, particularly the participants of the State of the Indigenous Peoples Address being held simultaneously in Cagayan de Oro City and Quezon City, she leaves behind continued discrimination, rising human rights violations and legitimized land grabbing in the name of an illusory development. This is her real legacy. These are what she has “accomplished” in the eight years that she sat in Malacañang,” the SIPA conference statement read.

The SIPA, organized by the LRC, is being held in Quezon City and Cagayan de Oro for the IPs in Mindanao, simultaneously.