of ownership, occupied or possessed by ICCs/IPs, by themselves or through their ancestors, communally or
individually since time immemorial, continuously to the present except when interrupted by war, force
majeure or displacement by force, deceit, stealth or as a consequence of government projects or any other
voluntary dealings entered into by government and private individuals/corporations, and which are
necessary to ensure their economic, social and cultural welfare. It shall include ancestral lands, forests,
pasture, residential, agricultural, and other lands individually owned whether alienable and disposable or
otherwise, hunting grounds, burial grounds, worship areas, bodies of water, mineral and other natural
resources, and lands which may no longer be exclusively occupied by ICCs/IPs but from which they
traditionally had access to for their subsistence and traditional activities, particularly the home ranges of
ICCs/IPs who are still nomadic and/or shifting cultivators;
b) Ancestral Lands — Subject to Section 56 hereof, refers to land occupied, possessed and utilized
by individuals, families and clans who are members of the ICCs/IPs since time immemorial, by themselves or
through their predecessorsininterest, under claims of individual or traditional group ownership,
continuously, to the present except when interrupted by war, force majeure or displacement by force, deceit,
stealth, or as a consequence of government projects and other voluntary dealings entered into by
government and private individuals/corporations, including, but not limited to, residential lots, rice terraces or
paddies, private forests, swidden farms and tree lots;
c) Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title — refers to a title formally recognizing the rights of
possession and ownership of ICCs/IPs over their ancestral domains identified and delineated in accordance
with this law;
d) Certificate of Ancestral Lands Title — refers to a title formally recognizing the rights of ICCs/IPs
over their ancestral lands;
e) Communal Claims — refer to claims on land, resources and rights thereon, belonging to the
whole community within a defined territory;
f) Customary Laws — refer to a body of written and/or unwritten rules, usages, customs and
practices traditionally and continually recognized, accepted and observed by respective ICCs/IPs;
g) Free and Prior Informed Consent — as used in this Act shall mean the consensus of all members
of the ICCs/IPs to be determined in accordance with their respective customary laws and practices, free
from any external manipulation, interference and coercion, and obtained after fully disclosing the intent and
scope of the activity, in a language and process understandable to the community;
h) Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples — refer to a group of people or
homogenous societies identified by selfascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as
organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of
ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds
of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to
political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, nonindigenous religions and cultures, became
historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. ICCs/IPs shall likewise include peoples who are
regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, at the
time of conquest or colonization, or at the time of inroads of nonindigenous religions and cultures, or the
establishment of present state boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and