04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly life and customs that are perceived as different from those of the rest of the population.[97] The kind of response the indigenous peoples chose to deal with colonial threat worked well to their advantage by making it difficult for Western concepts and religion to erode their customs and traditions. The "infieles societies" which had become peripheral to colonial administration, represented, from a cultural perspective, a much older base of archipelagic culture. The political systems were still structured on the patriarchal and kinship oriented arrangement of power and authority. The economic activities were governed by the concepts of an ancient communalism and mutual help. The social structure which emphasized division of labor and distinction of functions, not status, was maintained. The cultural styles and forms of life portraying the varieties of social courtesies and ecological adjustments were kept constantly vibrant.[98] Land is the central element of the indigenous peoples' existence. There is no traditional concept of permanent, individual, land ownership. Among the Igorots, ownership of land more accurately applies to the tribal right to use the land or to territorial control. The people are the secondary owners or stewards of the land and that if a member of the tribe ceases to work, he loses his claim of ownership, and the land reverts to the beings of the spirit world who are its true and primary owners. Under the concept of "trusteeship," the right to possess the land does not only belong to the present generation but the future ones as well.[99] Customary law on land rests on the traditional belief that no one owns the land except the gods and spirits, and that those who work the land are its mere stewards. [100] Customary law has a strong preference for communal ownership, which could either be ownership by a group of individuals or families who are related by blood or by marriage,[101] or ownership by residents of the same locality who may not be related by blood or marriage. The system of communal ownership under customary laws draws its meaning from the subsistence and highly collectivized mode of economic production. The Kalingas, for instance, who are engaged in team occupation like hunting, foraging for forest products, and swidden farming found it natural that forest areas, swidden farms, orchards, pasture and burial grounds should be communally-owned.[102] For the Kalingas, everybody has a common right to a common economic base. Thus, as a rule, rights and obligations to the land are shared in common. Although highly bent on communal ownership, customary law on land also sanctions individual ownership. The residential lots and terrace rice farms are governed by a limited system of individual ownership. It is limited because while the individual owner has the right to use and dispose of the property, he does not possess all the rights of an exclusive and full owner as defined under our Civil Code.[103] Under Kalinga customary law, the alienation of individually-owned land is strongly discouraged except in marriage and succession and except to meet sudden financial needs due to sickness, death in the family, or loss of crops.[104] Moreover, and to be alienated should first be offered to a clan-member before any villagemember can purchase it, and in no case may land be sold to a non-member of the ili.[105] Land titles do not exist in the indigenous peoples' economic and social system. The concept of individual land ownership under the civil law is elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 23/148