Macliing Dulag's Warding-Off Speech Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

If Kabunian gave you a land of milk and honey
and ordered you to take care of it for posterity
What will you do if intruders want to take
it away?

I imagine that you will fight
For they who do not are ungrateful to
Kabunian; they value not His gift
They ignore his command to defend the land
in the name coming generation thousands of years from now
They who do not, spit on the graves of their ancestors
who preserved the land for them
For land is life
For life is the land

If you were in our place
You will fight
You will fire your guns as we raise our spears
You will probably pay your way to the justice system
that does not understand our ways
For that is what you did to grab the lands of people
Like us on the other side of the mountain

So do not be stubborn in your ignorance of
Why we refuse to vacate the land which had
always been our home

We are the Palestinians in Palestine
The Lumads in Mindanao
The Mangyans in Mindoro
We are the Martians in Mars

Go away. Let our people sleep in peace

Tonight. And the night after.

(Macliing Dulag was the indigenous hero who led the opposition against the establishment of the Chico River Dam in the Cordillera, Philippines- a project conceived without the knowledge of the affected indigenous peoples. He was killed by the military on 24 April 1984.)