UP Students Support Party List of Indigenous Peoples

By WENDY ATUBAN
Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat.com

BAGUIO CITY — A newly forged alliance of indigenous students of the University of the Philippines system threw its support to the Katribu party list. Katribu aims to represent the issues and concerns of the indigenous people in the Philippines.

The UP Dalikan, an alliance of indigenous youth organizations in UP, was formed on Sept. 13 this year at Bengao here. The alliance consists of three organizations namely UP Anido of the Diliman campus, UP Green Mountain Circle-Cordilleran Society (GMC-CS) of Los Banos campus, and Paggawisan Tako Am-in (Pagta) based in UP College Baguio.

The alliance started off with organizations meeting separately every year to share the situations and experiences of the indigenous youth groups in their respective campuses. The annual meetings were called Dalikan, an ethnic term meaning stone foundations of a cooking pot.
For the alliance, it symbolizes the member organizations’ efforts and hard work in maintaining the greatness and stability of the pot. The term was later adopted as the name of the alliance when the three organizations decided to form the coalition.

The alliance acts as a coordinating body of the indigenous youths and their organizations in the university. Its objectives include facilitating an effective and fast communication lines between and among the member organizations and other organizations in the school, establishing support system that will assist each member organization in capacity building and strengthening, taking up the cudgels in realizing fruitful discussions and sharing of indigenous experiences, initiating leadership trainings, among others.

The alliance’s programs are guided by principles such as safeguarding the cultural heritage, education and capacity building of members, leadership and skills training, projection of indigenous people’s issues, advocacy works related to the indigenous peoples’ concerns, and conscious struggle towards eradication of discrimination against indigenous peoples.

As its starting program, the alliance observed its annual assembly with sharing of each organization’s experiences in the various UP campuses, including surveillance by state security forces. Both the GMC-CS and the UP Anido were subjected to surveillance inside their respective campus premises. Northern Dispatch/Posted by (Bulatlat.com)