The Philippine Constitution of 1987, Chapter 1, Section 2, states that the state recognizes, respects and protects the rights of indigenous peoples and preserves and develops their cultures, traditions and institutions. In the Re-Public Act (RA) 8371, known as the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, it defined the indigenous people as a group of homogeneous society, who continued to live as an organized community on demarcated and owned common lands used as their home, sharing common bonds of indigenous language, customs, culture, traditions and religions, they differ historically from the rest of the Filipinos. Annaya (2004), he added, are the living descendants of the inhabitants of lands now dominated by others before the invasion; they are culturally distinct groups who find themselves swallowed up by other settlers who have invaded their lands. (Abraham L. Masendo, April 2015, Manobo Tribe Then and Now). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay For hundreds, even thousands of years, the Cotabato Cordillera has been home to the indigenous people called the Manobo. There are at least five other Manobo tribes in Mindanao, but they have no clear connections with each other. Each tribe speaks a language incomprehensible to the others. Most Cotabato Manobos live in the western part of Sultan Kudarat province, but their territory extends to parts of Maguindanao in the north and South Cotabato and Sarangani in the south. Some organizations classify the Cotabato Manobo into two subgroups: those who live in the mountains and those who left and settled near the sea. The former are called Dulangan Manobo and the latter Karagatan Manobo. Dulangan is the name of a legendary ancestor and is said to mean "a high place". Although it may be a Manobo word, dulangan is not listed in existing Manobo dictionaries. Neither is karagatan, which is the Tagalog term for ocean. No distinction is made between the Manobos living in the highlands and their relatives in the coastal areas, as they share ancestors and maintain the same practices even to the present day. Here they are collectively referred to as Dulangan Manobo. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay In 1979, the Summer Institute of Linguistics estimated the Dulangan Manobo population at ten thousand . This figure, however, may not be accurate, because the researchers only stayed in a few villages. In 1999, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples of the Archdiocese of Cotabato conducted a more comprehensive study and researchers were able to identify 102 Dulangan Manobo settlements with a population of nearly forty thousand. The Dulangan Manobo don't look much different from most Filipinos. Except they are shorter and lighter and most of them have curly hair. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish them from the new settlers because many of them have begun to wear modern clothes and adapt the ways of the Christian settlers. Among the older Manobo, however, the traditional ways are still evident. Their teeth and mouths are red from chewing betel quid, and the women often wear large brass hoop earrings. (Jude Ortega,2013,Portal to the Plateau,Kulaman Sultan Kudarat Mindanao Philippines,Blogspot)