Indigenizing Law or Legalizing Governmentality? The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act and the Philippine Supreme Court

Abstract

"I will trace this interaction in the Philippine Supreme Court case of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) to contrast two possible hybrids. In the first, some separation is maintained between imperium and dominium, creating a disinterested, even moral objectivity which can be recalled in an effort to redress historic grievances. In the second, opposing view, dominium substitutes for imperium, and collective national interest theoretically prevails over the property interests. Since these outcomes reached a rough balance in the court case, which ended in a tie, I shall suggest the balance may ultimately tip in yet a third direction. With the help of a Thai example, neoliberal self-regulation can be seen as a regulated exchange between imperium and dominium, supposedly devolving ruling power down to substate agents but snatching ownership away as the cost of failing self-control. Rather than the end of sovereignty, this is a kind of endless cancellation of sovereignty which is paradoxically maintained in the act of consuming or betraying itself. Put another way, the enumerated rights in instruments like IPRA that indigenize law are one side of a coin whose other face is continued denial of the popular sovereignty which could make such rights effective. The role for indigenous knowledge is to enrich, complicate, and ultimately overload the simplistic economy of imperium and dominium by re-making the sovereignty concept."