Listening to Indigenous Wisdom in a Nation Built on Dispossession
In precolonial times, no Filipino would have imagined fencing off the land and calling it private property. The land was held in common by the community, stewarded by the *barangay*, and revered as a living source of sustenance and spirit. It was not bought or sold. It was not exploited for speculation. It was *lupa*—life itself.
What is this thing we call land ownership?
Long before titles, taxes, and tenancy, the people of these islands lived in harmony with the land. Among the Ifugao, the rice terraces were not only marvels of engineering but expressions of a communal relationship with the Earth. Among the Lumad of Mindanao, land is sacred, inherited not in deeds but in duties to protect it for future generations. As many of them still say today: “The land is life.”
This Indigenous understanding of land—as sacred, shared, and not subject to absolute ownership—resonates with philosophies across the globe.
The Aboriginal Australians say, “We don’t own the land. The land owns us.” The Māori of Aotearoa say, “I am the land, and the land is me.” The San of southern Africa say, “You cannot own the forest. It is like trying to own the air.”
Even the ancient Filipino word *banwa*, used by many ethnic groups to mean both “land” and “community,” hints at a deeper truth: land and society are inseparable. One cannot be healthy if the other is sick.
Yet somewhere along the way, this wisdom was buried under centuries of colonization and commodification. First came the Spanish *encomienda* system, handing over entire provinces to colonial favorites. Then the American land titling programs, legalizing dispossession under the guise of “development.” Today, we see vast haciendas lie idle while millions of Filipinos live in landlessness, poverty, or ecological ruin.
Who profits from this system? Not the farmers. Not the fisherfolk. Not the Indigenous peoples, who are still being displaced in the name of progress.
This is not just an economic problem—it is a moral one.
And it is here that an unlikely ally appears: Henry George, a 19th-century economist from the West who, remarkably, spoke a truth long understood by our own ancestors. George argued that while people have a right to the fruits of their labor, the value of land—the gift of nature and the product of community—belongs to all.
He proposed a system where we stop taxing work and enterprise, and instead recover the unearned value of land through a land value tax. In short: if you claim the privilege of exclusive use of land, you owe the community the value that land gains—not through your labor, but through the location, development, and efforts of everyone around you.
This isn’t socialism. It isn’t capitalism. It’s fairness.
Applied to the Philippines, a Georgist approach would break the back of feudal land monopolies, discourage land hoarding, and provide local governments with a just and stable revenue stream—without squeezing small farmers or entrepreneurs. It would reflect the principle that the land is not a commodity, but a common trust.
It would move us closer to the wisdom of our ancestors and the justice our people deserve.
We are a nation built on stolen land. The least we can do is stop pretending that ownership alone makes something just. It is time we asked, with the clarity of Massasoit and the courage of our own Lumad leaders:
“What is this thing you call property?”
And then answer: it is not the earth itself—it is our relationship to one another. Let us make it right.