“I tried to live a normal life,” Yana, 31, tells Mongabay. In 2020, after the Philippine government forcibly shut down schools for the Indigenous Lumad in the country’s south, Yana, a teacher, returned to her hometown of Davao de Oro to be with her family.

“But the military kept coming to my house, asking me to surrender or admit to supposedly teaching children about armed revolution,” says Yana, who, like all Lumad students and teachers interviewed for this story requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.

Soldiers had their eye on Yana because of a November 2018 incident in which she helped other teachers and humanitarian workers evacuate around 50 Lumad students from their campus in the municipality of Talaingod, in Davao del Norte province. Earlier in the day, paramilitary groups had threatened to hurt the students and teachers staying on the campus if they didn’t leave, according to the teachers.

When soldiers weren’t visiting Yana, they sought her father, intimidating him for information on subversive activity. Her mother died in 2019; Yana says it was the  stress from the constant harassment that caused this. She says she fears the same for her father should the military pressure escalate.

Since the Talaingod evacuation, Yana and 12 others have been charged with kidnapping, child trafficking and child abuse. The accused, known as the Talaingod 13, include opposition congresswoman France Castro and former congressman Satur Ocampo, who were at the scene to aid the evacuation of the students. After six years on trial, Yana says she broke down in tears upon learning on July 15 that a court had found the group guilty of child abuse.

The 13 have appealed the decision and are all currently out on bail. Rachel Pastores, one of the group’s lawyers, says that because the verdict isn’t final, they retain full rights as citizens, including Castro, who remains in her congressional post.

With the shutdown of Indigenous schools, Lumad teachers and youths say that attacks from both the military and allied paramilitary forces have worsened, forcing many of them to retreat to the relative safety of Manila.

“I came to Manila because my security was too severely at risk back home,” Yana says.

Educational inequalities

Beyond seeking safety, Lumad students and teachers are drumming up support to reopen their schools, to provide both education and a sanctuary.

Save Our Schools (SOS) Network, a civil society coalition supporting Indigenous education, urged the government last month to drop the charges against the Talaingod 13. It also pressed for the “immediate reversal of their wrongful conviction, the reopening of Lumad schools, and stronger protection for children in conflict zones.”

The Philippines’ Mindanao region, known for its large population of Indigenous and Muslim minorities, stands out for its inequalities, particularly in education. A recent World Bank report showed that 11% of Mindanao’s Indigenous peoples had no formal schooling, and just one out of 10 had a post-high school education. On average, the report showed they averaged just 6.3 years of schooling, 3.8 years less than  their nonminority counterparts.

From the 1980s, Lumad schools operated by various foundations grew throughout Mindanao, offering free education to the Indigenous population, ranging from basic to tertiary. Complementing conventional subjects like literacy and mathematics, their lessons also emphasized local heritage and environmental protection. Campuses sprouted all over, peaking at 215 across the region, with the Salugpongan Ta’Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center Inc. (STTICLCI) administering 54 of them, including the Talaingod school.

The government had long branded the schools as training hubs for the guerrillas of the communist New People’s Army (NPA), an armed insurgent group that remains active in parts of Mindanao. Those accusations escalated after Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. In July 2017, Duterte spelled out his ultimatum: “I’ll tell the Lumads now to leave those areas. I’ll bomb them.”

The Duterte family itself hails from the Mindanao region, where it holds significant political influence. For 32 of the past 36 years, either Duterte or one of his children has served as mayor of Davao City, the largest in the region.

From 2016 to 2024, human rights groups documented military and paramilitary killings of at least 12 Lumads, including students and teachers. One of the victims was Angel Rivas, a 12-year-old boy.

Under Duterte’s term, national human rights group Karapatan tallied state-sponsored attacks on Indigenous Filipinos including 102 killings, 69 abductions, 1,173 illegal arrests, and 19,859 victims of threats and harassment.

Throughout this year, Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of the former president, has been locked in a tirade with Castro after the latter exposed alleged corruption in the former’s office. Duterte has publicly chided Castro as a “kidnapper,” in reference to the Talaingod case, while the lawmaker said the tag was “disinformation” and “terrorist-labeling.”

Most recently, on Dec. 10, Duterte’s allies suddenly slapped Castro with an ethics complaint in a bid to remove her from Congress.

The complaint was filed by several Indigenous groups represented by Israelito Torreon, a controversial lawyer who himself faces sedition charges in relation to his defense of Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, a personal friend of Duterte facing sex trafficking charges.

The National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), known for its crackdown on dissenters and created by Duterte right after the Talaingod incident, has backed the complaint.

Torreon cited the court ruling in the Talaingod case as impetus for the complaint, regardless of Castro’s ongoing appeal. “If after proper proceedings, it is found that she is administratively guilty then proper penalty such as suspension, or if not, expulsion from the House of Representatives” is warranted, Torreon said.

Castro dismissed the move as a “baseless harassment suit.”

Meanwhile, dozens of Lumads and advocates have taken refuge in the capital indefinitely, ready to appear in court while dodging the threats hounding them. Their worries didn’t start in Talaingod, but it was there where they got much worse.

Trouble in Talaingod

Gika, now 23, was one of the students evacuated from the Talaingod Lumad school in 2018.

“They [the accused] helped us. We were not forced to join them. In fact, they are our second parents. They are the ones who took care of us when our parents were not around,” Gika says in Filipino during an October solidarity gathering following the ruling against the Talaingod 13. She criticizes the charges as malicious.

Gika says she recalls that two weeks after she began studying in Talaingod, paramilitary groups known for assassinating tribal leaders arrived at the school and threatened to execute staff if they didn’t leave immediately.

By 6 p.m., two dozen teachers and more than 50 students were trekking through the mud toward the highway.

Gika tearfully narrates the incident to Mongabay: “It was dark and the path was slippery. We had no flashlights. After three hours of walking we arrived at a military checkpoint where soldiers threatened us once more. But then folks from the church, advocates and our school administrator arrived.”

Lawmakers Castro and Ocampo arrived in emergency vehicles with pastors as part of a humanitarian rescue team. However, Gika says that “once we left, our tires were blown out by spikes placed on the road. Then we heard gunshots being fired at us. We screamed and cried. We were so scared.”

Police took the adults into custody and pressed charges shortly after, while the children were sent to a state welfare shelter. Court proceedings and a war of words between the government and the Lumad schools followed.

The Philippine army released a video on social media accusing Castro, Ocampo and the Lumad schools of being affiliated with the rebels, declaring that their “exploitation of Lumad children is real!”

Lumad groups supportive of the military’s presence also thanked the authorities for their “rescue” of the children and encouraged more actions “to save these young Indigenous people.”

According to the SOS Network, the Talaingod incident set off intensified militarization in the region for years to come, with Lumad schools as “primary targets.”

By December 2018, Duterte had announced the formation of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and intentions to “hamlet” the Lumad to keep them away from rebel camps. Congress also held a session to discuss recruitment by NPA guerrillas among Indigenous communities, paving the way for a later 2021 government resolution condemning the schools.

In July 2019, the Department of Education ordered the shutdown of 55 Salugpongan schools based on the advice of Duterte’s national security adviser. More school closures were ordered during the COVID-19 pandemic; by 2021, 215 schools had ceased to operate, displacing more than 10,000 students and hundreds of teachers.

Dan Palicte, Southeast Mindanao bishop for the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), was among those who aided the evacuation in Talaingod. He was accosted alongside the teachers, but the charges against him were dismissed by the judge early on.

However, in April 2021, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) froze several UCCP bank accounts and closed its property in Haran, Davao del Sur province, over alleged guerrilla ties. The property, a bishop’s house overseen by Palicte, was used as a sanctuary for Lumad youths and teachers.

“To be honest, we expected this. Our mandate is to serve the Indigenous. They are among the least, the lost and last as we say in the church. And the government doesn’t like that,” Palicte tells Mongabay.

Davao del Norte is home to several nickel and gold mining sites, which Palicte says investors have been eyeing. Today, without the Lumad schools and under greater military presence, Talaingod looks radically different.

“There’s lots of resorts popping up. Businesses from cities are coming in. A lot of land-grabbing disputes are leaving the Lumad without their ancestral land,” Palicte says.

In 2023, the Talaingod Municipal Tourism Office launched its “From Terrorism to Tourism” campaign to attract more investor attention.

‘My future was taken’

After the schools were shut down, many of the youths lost access to any kind of education. Palicte and Yana saw many former students return to working the fields with their relatives, while young women entered into arranged marriages.

“I lost my school so my parents pushed me to be married instead. My future was taken from me. I wanted to be a teacher,” says Gika, now married to a man 10 years older than her and chosen by her parents.

She describes the marriage as a “bad situation” and a means to subjugate her.

With schools no longer an available pathway out of poverty, marriage can become an economic proposition. “The dowries are used for debts,” Gika says.

For Yana, the mental strain comes from “being uprooted from your community by authorities who’re supposed to protect you.”

Other teachers like Lira and her husband, Geoff, retired to start a family and a quiet life. They were alarmed when, along with three others, they were jailed in September 2022 on human-trafficking charges, accused by police of smuggling minors into rebel camps. After nearly a year behind bars, they were acquitted in July 2023. However, the experience has left an indelible rage.

“My baby was 6 months old when they took us. It’s so painful. My anger never really goes away, and I feel it especially when I see the police. It’s like my mind goes to a place I’ve never known,” Lira tells Mongabay.

Meanwhile, Yana has sought out psychosocial intervention while staying in Manila. “I was uprooted. And even now, I have to be careful because of security threats. I have trust issues,” she says.

Gika, Yana and Lira are among many Lumads who have no idea when they can return home safely. Besides winning their appeal, they say reopening the Lumad schools is their best shot at a better future.

Progressive groups have echoed this demand; in Congress, Castro filed a resolution this month for an inquiry into the closure of Lumad schools.

“We teach Lumad children to be ‘stewards of the environment.’ Land is their life, not something for profit. It’s sacred. When we leave this world, the land is what remains,” Yana says, adding she hopes to once again witness students first learn how to read and write, before they take to the fields.

Banner image: Driven into a refugee camp during conflicts between the Philippine military and insurgent groups in Mindanao, a little girl looks out from behind barbed wire in 2015. Image by Phil Warren via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

For Philippines’ displaced indigenous students, COVID-19 is one of many threats