04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly In this connection, I submit that Cariño v. Insular Government[20] has been modified or superseded by our 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions. Its ratio should be understood as referring only to a means by which public agricultural land may be acquired by citizens. I must also stress that the claim of Petitioner Cariño refers to land ownership only, not to the natural resources underneath or to the aerial and cosmic space above. Significantly, in Director of Land Management v. Court of Appeals,[21] a Decision handed down after our three Constitutions had taken effect, the Court rejected a cultural minority member's registration of land under CA 141, Section 48 (c).[22] The reason was that the property fell within the Central Cordillera Forest Reserve. This Court quoted with favor the solicitor general's following statements: "3. The construction given by respondent Court of Appeals to the particular provision of law involved, as to include even forest reserves as susceptible to private appropriation, is to unconstitutionally apply such provision. For, both the 1973 and present Constitutions do not include timber or forest lands as alienable. Thus, Section 8, Article XIV of 1973 Constitution states that `with the exception of agricultural, industrial or commercial, residential and resettlement lands of the public domain, natural resources shall not be alienated.' The new Constitution, in its Article XII, Section 2, also expressly states that `with the exception of agricultural lands, all other natural resources shall not be alienated'." Just recently, in Gordula v. Court of Appeals,[23] the Court also stated that "forest land is incapable of registration, and its inclusion in a title nullifies that title. To be sure, the defense of indefeasiblity of a certificate of title issued pursuant to a free patent does not lie against the state in an action for reversion of the land covered thereby when such land is a part of a public forest or of a forest reservation, the patent covering forest land being void ab initio." RA 8371 Violates the Inalienability of Natural Resources and of Public Domains The ponencia theorizes that RA 8371 does not grant to ICCs/IPs ownership of the natural resources found within ancestral domains. However, a simple reading of the very wordings of the law belies this statement. Section 3 (a)[24] defines and delineates ancestral domains as "all areas generally belonging to ICCs/IPs comprising lands, inland waters, coastal areas, and natural resources therein, held under a claim 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 x x x. It shall include ancestral lands, forests, pasture, residential, agricultural, and other lands individually owned whether alienable and disposable or otherwise, hunting grounds x x x bodies of water, mineral and other natural resources x x x." (Emphasis ours.) elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 140/148