Stand with Indigenous Women. Uphold Indigenous Peoples’ Rights!

[TAGALOG] Tumindig kasama ang Katutubong Kababaihan. Itaguyod ang Karapatan ng mga Katutubo!

This Women’s Month, Panaghiusa Philippine Network to Uphold Indigenous Peoples’ Rights honors the courage of Indigenous women who stand at the frontlines of struggle. Their experiences reveal the overlapping violence of government oppression and corporate exploitation and highlight the strength in collective resistance.

Indigenous women, together with advocates and human rights defenders, during the briefings with the United Nations offices and the diplomatic community last October 2025.

Indigenous women are defenders of ancestral domains, keepers of culture, and nurturers of communities. Yet they are among the criminalized, harassed, displaced, and silenced.

We stand with Lumad youth leader Michelle Campos, Indigenous peoples’ rights advocate Loida Magpatoc, and other Indigenous women political prisoners among the 108 documented Indigenous Peoples and advocates unjustly detained. We denounce the terrorist designation of Cordillera Peoples Alliance’s leaders, including Sarah Alikes and Jennifer Awingan, targeted solely for their steadfast defense of their people’s rights and struggles.

We condemn the intimidation, harassment, and illegal arrest of Indigenous women in Dupax del Norte, where they stood at the people’s barricade against Woggle Mining, facing police to defend their ancestral lands. In Maguindanao del Sur, violence against Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples, especially the Teduray and Lambangian, has been devastating. According to Timuay Justice and Governance, since 2014, around 102 non-Moro Indigenous Peoples have been killed, including leaders, women, and youth. 

The assault on Indigenous women is also carried out through corporate plunder and land-grabbing. In Mindoro, Mangyan women and communities resist the seizure of ancestral lands by the Pieceland Corporation. In Palawan, the Molbog people resist San Miguel Corporation’s attempts to displace them for agribusiness and infrastructure projects. These struggles are linked, showing how corporations treat ancestral lands as commodities, disregarding the lives and cultures rooted in them.

In Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, Teduray-Lambangian Youth and Lilak Purple Action for Women’s Rights report that Taboli Manobo women face not only environmental destruction from mining and plantations but also sexual violence, harassment, and exploitation from workers of mining subsidiaries of San Miguel Corporation and plantations like the Sumifru Corporation.

Moreover, in other provinces, Indigenous women and their communities stand against destructive mining and dam projects.

In Apayao, they defend their ancestral lands against the Gened Dams. In Rizal and Quezon, they oppose the Kaliwa-Kanan-Laiban Dams. In Panay, they resist the Jalaur Dam. In General Nakar, Quezon, and Aurora, they denounce the Pacific Coast City project, which plans to build nine cities covering 80,000 hectares of ancestral lands.

In the Cordillera, Indigenous women resist Crescent Mining in Mankayan, ISRI in Itogon, Yamang Mineral in Abra, and Makilala Mining in Kalinga. They also oppose the Upper Tabuk Hydropower Projects and Saltan Dams in Kalinga, which threaten to displace communities and destroy ancestral domains.

Each of these struggles reveals how so-called “development” projects erase communities, cultures, and ecosystems in the name of profit, while Indigenous women rise to defend life itself.

Indigenous women carry the weight of displacement, militarization, and criminalization, yet they continue to rise. They nurture communities, sustain resistance, and embody the collective will to survive and flourish. Their resistance is not only for themselves, but for future generations and for the survival of our peoples. Their courage at the barricades, in the courts, in the fields, and in the streets is a call to all of us to break the chains of repression, to dismantle systems of plunder, and to build a future rooted in justice and self-determination.

This Women’s Month, we commit to amplifying Indigenous women’s voices, defending their rights, and joining their struggles. Their courage demands our solidarity. Their fight is our fight. To honor Indigenous women is to resist alongside them. To celebrate their strength is to oppose the forces that seek to silence them.

We call on communities, organizations, and allies to stand with the Indigenous Peoples. Let’s support their campaigns, defend their lands, expose corporate and state abuses, and build networks of solidarity that reach beyond borders. Let us transform grief into action, outrage into resistance, and solidarity into victories. The struggle of Indigenous women is the struggle of all Filipinos who dream of justice, freedom, and dignity for the current and future generations. #