Module 5: Unit 1

• Diversity


  Differences in gender, age groups, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, language preference, religion, political view, and special needs
• Ethnicity


  A subcultural group within a multicultural society
• Features of an ethnic group (according to Hutchinson and Smith)


  • Common proper name
  • Myth of common ancestry
  • Shared historical memories
  • Elements of common culture
  • Link with a homeland
  • Sense of solidarity
• Ethnicity (local and simpler description)


  A primary sense of belonging to an ethnic group
• Ethnic group


  Consanguine in nature, meaning the ties are reckoned by blood and traced through the family tree
• Race


  The categorization of parts of a population based on physical appearance due to particular historical social and political forces
• Acculturation


  Cultural modification of an individual or group by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture
• Refugee


  A person who flees one area or country to seek shelter or protection from danger
• Health disparities


  Differences in the incidence, prevalence and mortality and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions among specific population groups
• Groupings of population


  • Majority (those with characteristics found in more than 50% of a population)
  • Minority (consists of fewer than 50% of the population)
• Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous People (ICC/IP)


  People who were/are able to maintain their core culture, a group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, people who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, people who retained some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions
• Estimated number of IPs in the Philippines is 14 - 17 million
• Number of ethno-linguistic groups in the Philippines is 110
• Distribution of IPs in the Philippines

  • 61% - Mindanao
  • 33% - Luzon (mainly Northern Luzon within the CAR area)
  • 6% - Visayas
• Ten upland tribal groups in Luzon

  • Ifugao
  • Bontoc
  • Kankana-ey
  • Ibaloi
  • Kalinga
  • Tinguian
  • Isneg
  • Gaddang
  • Ilongot
  • Negrito
• Settlement of these tribes

  • Geographically isolated
  • Limited access to basic social services
• Main forms of work

  • Wet-rice farmers (Ifugaos, Bontocs and Kankana-ey)
  • Wet-rice and dry-rice growing techniques (Kalinga and Tinguian)
  • Shifting cultivation (Isneg, Ilongot and Gaddang)
• "Abat" and "Senga"


  Community practice in Tabuk, Kalinga for diseases and illness, a healing ritual done because of the belief that the disease is caused by a malevolent spirit, involves a traditional priest or a medium, butchering of animals, gongs and other materials, done with complete reverence and solemnity, involves the elders of the community
• Threats to community health among Igorot people

  • Land-grabbing
  • Discrimination and inequalities
  • Destructive socio-economic projects (mega-dams, large-scale mines and mega-tourism)
  • Commercialization of indigenous culture
  • Institutionalized discrimination
  • Violation and non-recognition of indigenous socio-political systems and processes
  • Government neglect of basic social services to indigenous people
• Aeta/Ayta/Agta


  A group of people termed in Negrito during the Spanish colonial rule, emerged from early waves of Malay or Proto-Malay migrants, thought to be descendants of the earliest settlers to the archipelago, who may have migrated through land bridges from the Asian mainland
• Areas where Aeta/Ayta/Agta live

  • Zambales
  • Tarlac
  • Pampanga
  • Angeles
  • Olongapo
  • Panay
  • Bataan
  • Nueva Ecija
• Main skills


  • Hunting
  • Gathering
  • Jungle survival
• Aeta/Ayta/Agta practices

  Herbal medicine, women healers often use one or two types or combination of medicinal plants and once diseases prolong and/or are associated with spiritual interference, they have their own rituals to address those problems
• Characteristics of Aeta/Ayta/Agta


  • Nomadic
  • Monotheistic
  • Peaceful and Non-violent
• Aeta/Ayta/Agta language

  Sambal
• Aeta/Ayta/Agta belief

  Highly respectful of their environment since they believe that any type of exploitation or wasting of resources would be offensive to the spirits
• Threats to the community health of the Aeta people

  • Dispossession, poverty and political discrimination through decades of protracted land rights processes
  • Little recognition and support from the local government
  • Marginalization and displacement due to land grabbers, illegal logging, mining and slash-burn farming
  • Racial discrimination
• Lumad


  A Bisayan term meaning "indigenous", "native" or "born of the earth", adapted by a group of 15 from more than 18 Mindanao ethnic groups to distinguish them from other Mindanaoans, Moro or Christian
• Members of the Lumad tribal groupings

  • Ata
  • Bagobo
  • Mamanwa
  • Mandaya
  • Manobo
  • Subanon
  • Tiruray
• Lumads constitute 61% of the total population of indigenous people according to a report of the United Nations
• Lumads only comprises 5% of the total Mindanaoan population
• Current socio-political context of the Lumad

  Burdened with violence and oppression, and among this population, the most vulnerable are still women and children
• Health risks in the Lumad community

  • Lack of access to clean water and hygiene products
  • Infectious diseases due to cramped living spaces
  • Sexual violence, trauma and loss livelihood among Muslim women
• Threats to community health of the Lumad people

  • Long-term displacement
  • Legalized land dispossession through harassment and illegal possession
  • Threats from development of plantation agriculture, logging concessions, hydro-electric and geothermal energy plant schemes
  • Considered to be outnumbered in their ancestral lands
  • Human rights violation including destruction and burning down of schools, areal bombings
  • Use of school facilities for military operations
• The first-ever Report on the State of the World of Indigenous Peoples issued by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in January 2010 revealed that IPs make up fully one-third of the world's poorest peoples and suffer disproportionately in areas like health, education, and human rights, and regularly face systemic discrimination and exclusion
• WHO (2001) proposed definition of Indigenous health

  Health was both a collective and an individual intergenerational continuum encompassing a holistic perspective incorporating four distinct shared dimensions of life: the spiritual, the intellectual, physical and emotional. Linking these four fundamental dimensions, health and survival manifests itself on multiple levels where the past, present and future co-exist simultaneously
• Indigenous health inequalities as compared to non-IPs

  • Lower life expectancies
  • Higher incidence of chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease and cancers)
  • Relatively higher incidence of infectious diseases
  • Higher incidence of mental health disorders and substance misuse
• Explanatory frameworks for indigenous health disparities

  • Racial differences (indigenous peoples have an underlying biological predisposition to poorer health status, role of genetic factors in increasing the propensity to particular disease in particular populations)
  • Health behaviors (development of sedentary lifestyles, high-energy diets, smoking and alcohol use, adoption of Western lifestyles)
  • Socioeconomic disadvantage (increased prevalence of poverty, poor housing, low educational achievement, unemployment and inadequate incomes, basic sustenance levels of food and shelter are compromised)
  • Historical processes of colonization (introduced a complex, multi-layered process of social change, alienation of indigenous peoples from their traditional lands, disruption of traditional lifestyles by the complex interplay of wars, frontier violence, environmental change and population migration, social, economic and political marginalization)
  • Urbanization and globalization (increased carbon emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss and water shortage, disruption of traditional lifestyles linked to the land and environment, degradation of public health necessities such as safe drinking water and sanitation)
• Strategies for improving indigenous health policy

  • National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (government body responsible of protecting the rights of ICCs/IPs through governmental programs)
  • R.A 8371 (The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 declares that the State shall recognize and promote all the rights of ICCs/IPs to government basic services health, addresses the social, economic and cultural well-being of IPs)
  • UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007 (UNDRIP) (rights to improve their economic and social conditions w/o discrimination, traditional medicine and maintaining their health practices, conserve their vital medicinal resources and access health and social services w/o discrimination, enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health)
  • United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2000 (UNPFII) (urging all member states to include intercultural perspective within their health policies, programs and services, special reference to reproductive health as well as to reassess the role play by healers and midwives as agents for the exchange between ancestral medicine and western medicine)