Facing Ongoing Extractivism and Structural Violence in the name of “Development”
The Philippines, alongside many other countries in Southeast Asia, has become a battleground for soft power wars between the U.S. and China. Audrey and her ancestors have been intentional collateral of these “development” projects for generations. As a womxn from an Indigenous Peoples community, she has been at the forefront of violence all her life, resisting development projects such as the Chico River Dam Project.
In recent years, Audrey has strengthened her approach to political activism as she engages with JASS in multiple ways including through feminist popular education processes, transnational solidarity building, solidarity resourcing and most recently, through engagement in JASS Southeast Asia’s flagship program “Follow the Money.” Follow the Money (FtM) is an organizing tactic and approach to challenging extractives in the region, and an expansion to the activist toolkit Behind the Scenes of Extractives: Money, Power & Community. The process brought together community leaders of Innabuyog, a regional alliance of indigenous women’s organizations in the Cordillera region, to map where the money of four major extractive mega-dams are funded from and to find links across these resource mobilizers.
Follow the Money
The FtM process that was led by JASS in 2022, brought together Audrey alongside 20 other community leaders to find links in the investments of these mega-dam projects. Through this process, they have identified actors involved in mega-dam projects in the Cordillera region, and how they are related to actors involved in extractivism in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia.
While community leaders are working on local strategies for challenging these mega-dam projects, JASS discovered through a national-levelFtM process in Indonesia in 2023 that the investors of several extractives projects work in similar circles as those involved in the mega-dam projects in the Philippines. This sets the scene for a transnational movement to challenge extractives in the region, with land and territory defenders and advocates at the forefront of engaging extractivism in the Southeast Asia region.
Audrey’s decision to work with JASS on Follow the Money to co-create and contextualize the four mega-dam projects in the Cordillera region has shifted the strategic approach in which she and the Indigenous peoples of Cordillera have been organizing their resistance. Audrey shared –
We were able to deeply understand the connection of issues, who are involved in the projects in our ancestral domains, and where we will focus our efforts in the campaign.
As a result of this strengthened approach of Innabuyog and other organizations in the region, they were able to set collective agendas in the communities to strengthen Indigenous women’s demands for basic rights.
FtM was an opportunity for the collective movement building for Innabuyog where JASS has provided solidarity resourcing among other strategic capacities to systematically address the multitude of ways that womxn and Indigenous Peoples lack basic services, are silenced through violence and continue to face extraction of their natural resources.
Audrey shared that despite the ongoing “development” taking place in the Cordillera region, it remains one of the poorest (in terms of access to basic needs) parts of the Philippines. Being part of JASS’ feminist popular education processes helped her deepen her political analysis – and gave her an expanded definition of what gender-based violence is in her region. The violence that the Indigenous people face in Cordillera is so much more than domestic and family violence – it is the increased militarization, coupled with sexual abuses committed by soldiers and police officers – all while receiving minimal state support, access to public services, and mounting debt.
JASS and Innabuyog had been long-time allies in the Philippines. Innabuyog was part of the first JASS movement building institute (MBI) held in Manila in 2009. Innabuyog also joined several One Day, One Voice (ODOV) activities in recent years.
Audrey got to know JASS more during a national gathering of women four years ago, where Audrey had shared the experiences of the Cordillera women. Audrey then joined the transnational solidarity movement of Indigenous Land Rights Defenders through the South to South exchange, held virtually.
It is important to participate in gatherings and spaces where we can further amplify our issues, and share knowledge and experiences with fellow Indigenous women, with whom we share the same issues, the same oppression, and the same fervor in struggling for self-determination.
Solidarity with other Indigenous Peoples
Audrey deeply understood the purpose of long-term feminist movement building because of the Cordillera region’s history of resistance. The people of Cordillera are known for their fierce resistance against the national government and World Bank in the 1980s to defend their lands and territory against development aggression. Her motivation to continue with the same spirit of active resistance is what led to the formation of Innabuyog, where Audrey is the secretary-general.
When asked what one movement lesson she holds dear, she shares the words of the late Petra Macliing, founding member of Innabuyog and Cordillera People’s Alliance, and the only woman leader during the Chico River Dam struggle against the Marcos Sr. administration and the World Bank.
Women must keep themselves perpetually organized to keep forwarding the rights and welfare of Indigenous women.
Related Posts
