This year, the county and world are celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day with the theme “COVID-19 and Indigenous Peoples Resilience.” There is much reason to celebrate the resilience of indigenous peoples (IPs) while not forgetting the pressing challenges they face. IPs living in their communities have remained resilient since time immemorial. For centuries, they have employed patterns of responses to diseases and hunger guided by their indigenous knowledge.

This resilience of the IPs is again demonstrated during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Many IPs, especially those with strong grounding to their own knowledge, systems, and practices in farming have not seen the adverse impact of the virus in their communities. Supply of food during the pandemic is secured by taking care of food crops that naturally grow in their lands and by sowing traditional seeds and plant varieties suited to various types of environment. In the possibility that the pandemic will pose threats to their communities, IPs can retreat to identified sanctuaries within their traditional territories.

However, many of these indigenous communities are within contested areas and others are displaced from their traditional territories. Even ancestral domains secured by titles are hosts to extractive industries, plantations and other projects that reshape traditional spaces. With the continuing development aggression and displacement from their lands, IPs are starting to lose their ability to adequately respond to hunger and diseases.

To date, there is no IP plan to combat the pandemic and its effects to the indigenous communities. If this will not be addressed, the lack of it will eventually result to their marginalization in the programming and budgeting, during and even after the COVID-19 health crisis.
The responses of the government and the other stakeholders must begin with the recognition that the IPs are rights holders and holders of knowledge and practices that make them resilient and creative. They should not be treated as mere victims of the pandemic that need token assistance.

The IPs’ ancestors have survived pandemics and development aggressions. It is about time for the government to seriously consider the indigenous knowledge and practices. A starting point would be the development of IP plan tackling COVID-19 that incorporates these bodies of knowledge.