Picturesque Lake Sebu in South Cotabato is touted as a tourism destination. There is no single vantage point from where to take a photo of the lake in its entirety. Each viewpoint, following its contours, offers a different feature. The possibilities are as numerous as the vantage points. Iconic postcard shots feature clusters of huts on stilts, restrained carabao grazing close to the water’s edge, or the lonely silhouette of a paddler gliding over the fluid plane. The lake is often touted as the established home of the T’boli and showcased as the centre of Tboli culture.
The Tboli are found everywhere around the lake, whether on the roadside or in the Saturday markets where they display wares for sale. They are hard to miss. And if the colorful garb is overlooked, the jingling of bells herald their arrival.
The Tboli and Lake are invariably linked; Lake Sebu is both the name of the lake and the settlement around it. For 600 years, the T’boli have lived there and their culture and craft — weaving and metalwork primarily — have flourished.
The Tboli are of the lake and land. And the lake and land are theirs.
But underlying the seemingly perfect idyll is a brutal truth. Around 80 percent of the land around the lake and the islets (and traditional graveyards) within is no longer owned by the Tboli. These areas are now occupied by settlers of Bicolano, Tagalog, and Ilongo origin.
“The encroachment started in the 1950s,” says Maria Todi, an NCCA Gawad Gamaba awardee in 2017 for her initiatives in cultural preservation of Tboli traditions. “Migrants from Luzon and Visayas, particularly from Bicol and Iloilo, arrived in trickles. Because they were generally friendly and not aggressive, the locals coexisted with them. Gradually, control over our ancestral lands was lost as the settlers came armed, not with guns, but with titles.”
The Tboli had no notion of private land ownership, and many have been defrauded out of their ancestral domains in the absence or lack of formal titles to their traditional claims. The Tboli which are by nature non–confrontational, often leave to avoid conflict. And in the times that legal cases are filed to settle disputes, private property laws are not on their side.
Resorts and guesthouses, which serve tilapia prepared in a myriad of ways, line the lakeshore to cater to tourists. Fish pens, formed by the placements of bamboo spokes, break the glassy surface of the magnificent, tranquil pond, appearing as crossword puzzles from above subdividing the lake in numerous sections. The culturing of tilapia has proliferated that the once blue colored lake has turned green from pollution caused by the excessive amount of feeds being dispensed, eventually compelling the DENR to introduce plankton to address the deteriorating condition.
“The lake was part of our ancestral domain. The fishing ground belonged to everyone. Anyone can just throw a net or a line into the lake. Anyone can fish. Or swim. Business interests have now prevailed, depriving the Tboli of what was once communal. Now it is exclusive,” Maria Todi laments.
The introduction of the concept of private property has not only transferred ownership to non-Tboli settlers but has also initiated the commercialization of the lake where individual profit, not communal benefit, is the desired outcome.
“Values have changed. Mindsets have changed. Commercialization has taken root. The remaining Tboli who still own modest shares of land eventually give in and sell to the highest bidder, seduced by the astronomical prices the properties command.”
Maria Todi’s School of Living Tradition sits in a spot which overlooks the lake, not on the shores around the lake itself. Ironic that for a natural landmark widely regarded as their ancestral domain, the Tboli have lost control over it. While they have kept their culture and have made great strides to preserve it, they have lost a significant chunk of their land.
There is the violent takeover of land as experienced in other parts of Mindanao, with massive upheaval social and economic fallout. Then there is the quiet easing in of changes, slow and measured, deceptive in its transformation, fundamentally the same; a state of siege nonetheless. Both resulting in the same aftermath — displacement.
“Killing me softly. That’s how I consider it,” Maria Todi says, in dismay as the struggle against perpetual encroachment from outsiders continues.
Project Larawan is an initiative of Gabriel “Gabby” Malvar, a documentary filmmaker, writer and photographer, whose narratives are nuanced with unique, inventive perspectives to provoke an inquisitive look at his favorite subject, the Philippines. Become a part of Filipino identity every other Saturday on the DAILY TRIBUNE.