Separate Opinion
11
G.R. No. 224469
applicable provision in the Civil Code, custom, when duly proven, can
define rights and liabilities.
Customary law is a primary, not secondary, source ofrights under
the IPRA and uniqueiy applies to ICCs/IPs. Its recognition does not
depend on the absence of a specific provision in the civil law. The
indigenous concept of ownership under customary law is specifically
acknowledged and recognized, and coexists with the civil law concept and
the laws on land titling and land registration.
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The moral import of ancestral domain, native land or being native is
"belongingness" to the land, being people of the land - by sheer force of
having sprung from the land since time beyond recall, and the faithful
nurture of the land by the sweat of one's brow. This is fidelity of
usufructuary relation to the land - the possession of stewardship through
perduring, intimate tillage, and the mutuality of blessings between man and
land; from man, care for land; from the land, sustenance for man. 29
Clearly, the ICCs/IPs' ownership of their ancestral domains is unique.
It is different from the "titled ownership under existing laws" or "right of
possession" by "national minorities" contemplated by P.D. 705. ICCs/IPs
have ownership - not mere possession - that is characterized as "private
but communal," a description that is antithetical to the concept of "titled
ownership" as known in civil law.
Given the foregoing, the letter of P.D. 705, Sec. 77 cannot be conceived
to cover the cutting of timber or forest products in ancestral domains, as to do
so would be a strained construction of a penal statute. It would penalize an act
despite the lack of textual support to make it so. It would be an arbitrary and
baseless expansion of a penal statute.
The foregoing disquisition thus begs the question: If P.D. 705, Sec. 77
is not applicable to ancestral domains, does this mean that timber and forest
products found therein can be cut by anyone - IPs or non-members of IPs
alike - without limitations?
The answer would be in the negative.
In cases where non-members of IPs illegally cut trees in ancestral
domains, it would still be punishable, not by P.D. 705, Sec. 77, but by the
penal provisions of the IPRA, particularly Sec. 72 in relation to Sec. 10, which
states:
SECTION 10. Unauthorized and Unlawful Intrusion.
Unauthorized and unlawful intrusion upon, or use of any portion of the
ancestral domain, or any violation of the rights hereinbefore enumerated,
shall be punishable under this law. Frnihermore, the Government shall take
29
Id. at 224-225. (Emphasis supplied, italics omitted)