04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly (f) Other relevant facts.[6] In Philippine constitutional law, the term "indigenous peoples" pertains to those groups of Filipinos who have retained a high degree of continuity from pre-Conquest culture.[7] Philippine legal history, however, has not been kind to the indigenous peoples, characterized them as "uncivilized,"[8] "backward people,"[9] with "barbarous practices"[10] and "a low order of intelligence."[11] Drawing inspiration from both our fundamental law and international law, IPRA now employs the politically-correct conjunctive term "indigenous peoples/indigenous cultural communities" as follows: Sec. 3. Definition of Terms.-- For purposes of this Act, the following terms shall mean: xxx (h) Indigenous peoples/Indigenous cultural communities.— refer to a group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription 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, non-indigenous religions and cultures, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. Indigenous peoples 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 non-indigenous religions and cultures, or the establishment of present State boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may have resettled outside their ancestral domains x x x. Long before the Spaniards set foot in these islands, the indigenous peoples were already plowing our soil and hunting in our forests. The Filipinos of Aeta and Malay stock, who were the original inhabitants of our archipelago, were, at that time, practicing a native culture. From the time the Spaniards arrived up to the early part of the American regime,[12] these native inhabitants resisted foreign invasion, relentlessly fighting for their lands. Today, from the remote uplands of Northern Luzon, to Palawan, Mindoro and Mindanao, the indigenous peoples continue to live on and cultivate their ancestral lands, the lands of their forefathers. Though Filipinos today are essentially of the same stock as the indigenous peoples, our national culture exhibits only the last vestiges of this native culture. Centuries of colonial rule and neocolonial domination have created a discernible distinction elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 78/148