Traditional Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act

Nice of t 25 AUG -7 P4:21 TWENTIETH CONGRESS OF THE RECENAD 2! Fist Regular SeSAmES First Regular Session SENATE S.B. No. 1131 Introduced by SENATOR IMEE R. MARCOS AN ACT SAFEGUARDING THE TRADITIONAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES EXPLANATORY NOTE The Philippines is home to a rich cultural diversity, with an estimate of 14 to 17 million Indigenous peoples representing 112 distinct ethno-linguistic groups. These communities maintain unique traditions, cultures, and ways of life that set them apart from mainstream society, often resulting in their marginalization. A report by World Mission, a Catholic missionary organization, notes that indigenous peoples are among the most disadvantaged, facing significant challenges in both social and economic development. Globally, they account for 15% of the world's poor, often experiencing poverty, low literacy rates, and high unemployment. According to the World Bank, their vital role in conservation, indigenous peoples experience disproportionately high levels of poverty. They make up only 6.2% of the global population, yet account for 18.2% of those living in extreme poverty worldwide. One of the many struggles of the indigenous peoples is protecting their cultural heritage. To address this, the national government has enacted several laws, such as Republic Act No. 837, or the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, and Republic Act No. 8293 or the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, to recognize and protect the indigenous peoples' cultural heritage. However, the provisions of these laws are inadequate to protect the traditional cultural heritage and properties of the country's indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous peoples globally often face inadequate legal protection for their rights. While national laws and constitutions may recognize these rights, implementation often falls short, leaving indigenous communities vulnerable to displacement, violence, and exploitation.

It should be kept in mind that the indigenous peoples' rich culture and vibrant traditions contribute to the formation of a national identity that must be preserved across generations and treated with respect and honor. Thus, the immediate passage of this bill is earnestly sought. IMEE R. MARCOS

25 AUG -7 P4:21 TWENTIETH CONGRESS OF THE) RECE First Regular SEsiP LIPPINES, First Regular Session SENATE S.B. No. 1131 Introduced by SENATOR IMEE R. MARCOS AN ACT SAFEGUARDING THE TRADITIONAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in Congress assembled:

SECTION 1. Short Title. - This Act shall be known as the " Traditional Property

Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act".

SEC. 2. Declaration of Policy. - It is hereby declared the policy of the State to

protect the traditional cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Philippines traditional artists and artisans in their contribution to their respective ethnic culture and national heritage by ensuring that their rights are protected.

SEC. 3. Definition of Terms. - For purposes of this Act, the following terms

shall be defined as follows: a. Commission refers to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts; b. Community refers to the congregation of people with social cohesion and identity organized among common values interacting with intimacy and reciprocity in a shared circumscribed location in units larger than a household and has more similarities in the types and forms of their material goods; c. Communal ownership refers to common ownership within a community; d. Craft refers to the description of the family of artistic practices within the decorative arts, traditionally, which is defined by their relationship to functional or utilitarian products such as sculptural forms in the vessel tradition or by their use of such natural media as wood, clay, glass, textiles and metal;

e. Cultural agencies refer to the following national government agencies with their specific areas of responsibility: b.1. National Museum (cultural property); b.2. National Library (books); b.3. National Historical Institute (Philippine history); b.4. National Archives (documents); b.5. Cultural Center of the Philippines (culture and arts); and b.6. Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (language). f. Cultural heritage refers to the totality of cultural property preserved and developed through time and passed on to posterity; g. Cultural property refers to all products of human creativity by which the people and nation reveal their identity, including churches, mosques and other places of religious worship, schools and natural history specimens and sites, whether publicly or privately owned, movable or immovable, and tangible or intangible; h. Culture refers to the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs; i. Derivative work refers to a new work provided that they do not violate any subsisting copyright upon the original work employed or any part thereof, or to imply any right to such use of the original works, or to secure or extend copyright in such original works. Derivative works may include: dramatizations, translations, adaptations, abridgements, arrangements, and other alterations of literary music work; collections of literary, scholarly or artistic works, and compilations of data and other materials which are original by reason of the selection or coordination or arrangement of their contents; j. Indigenous peoples refer to group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed customs, tradition and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and culture, become historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos; k. Intangible cultural heritage refers to the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills as well as the instruments, objects, and artifacts associated therewith, that the communities, groups and individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage, such as (1) oral traditions, languages, expressions; (2) performing arts; (3) social practices, rituals and festive events; (4) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the

universe; and (5) traditional craftmanship such as handloom weavings, wood carvings and pottery, among others; 1. Intangible cultural property refers to the people's learned processes along with the knowledge, skills and creativity that inform and are developed by them, the products they create and the resources, spaces and other aspects of social and natural context necessary for their sustainability; m. Oral expression refers to the expression uttered by the mouth, spoken, oral testimony or transmitted by speech; n. Ownership refers to the legal right of possession or proprietorship, the state, relation, or fact of being an owner, the rights or interests of an owner, ownership especially by a single person that is free of any encumbrances or limitations other than statutory; o. Performance refers to the acting out of a ceremony, play, piece of music, etc., the execution or accomplishment of works, acts, feats etc., a particular action, deed or proceeding the manner in which or the efficiency with which something reacts or fulfills its intended purpose, and not necessarily as part of the social process; p. Registry refers to the Philippine Registry of Cultural Property which is the registry of all cultural property of the country deemed of significant importance to our cultural heritage as defined in Republic Act No. 10066; q. Rites refer to the formal or ceremonial acts or procedures prescribed or customary in religious or other solemn use, or a particular form of system of religious or other ceremony; r. Rituals refers to an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite, a system or collection of religious of other rites; observance of set of forms in public worship, a prescribed or established or ceremonial acts of features collectively, as in religious services; any practice or pattern of behavior regulating social conduct; s. Royalty refers to the payment to the holder of a patent or copyright or resource for the right to use their property; t. Social process refers to the means by which culture and social organization change or are preserved due to process or practice; u. Tangible cultural property refers to a cultural property with historical, archival, anthropological, archaeological, artistic and architectural value, and with exceptional or traditional production, whether of Philippine origin or not, including antiques and natural history specimens with significant value; and v. Tradition refers to the beliefs, customs, practices, industries, expressions, whether tangible or intangible, maintained and shared differentially by society, and handed down from generation to generation. Tradition, in this respect, is a continuum that change and may arise in time and shall not therefore be subject to time limitation.

SEC. 4. National Commission for Culture and the Arts. - The National

Commission for Culture and the Arts, hereinafter referred to as the Commission, shall implement the provisions of this Act.

SEC. 5. Powers and Functions of the Commission. - The Commission shall

exercise the following powers and functions: a. Create an office, within its structure, to coordinate all efforts of the government and private agencies that have forms of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in making the Philippine Registry of Cultural Property and undertake to safeguard the viable national cultural heritage stipulated in the said registry; b. With the approval of the Board, the Commission shall have the authority to reorganize its structure and staffing pattern in order to carry out its functions. The incumbent leaders of the existing Commission shall automatically be upgraded to analogous positions, with respect to the rest of the personnel; c. Assist in identifying works and attributing authorship and shall be further responsible for maintaining and populating the registry; d. Assist the claimants and relevant government agencies in resolving conflicts of ownership and attribution who will give permission to the people who wish to use the work upon discovery of the same in the database; and e. Assist relevant government agencies in the prosecution of unauthorized use of intellectual property of indigenous peoples.

SEC. 6. Intellectual Property Rights of Ethno-Linguistic Groups. - Traditional

cultural property, whether tangible or intangible, of all the ethno-linguistic groups that make up the people of the Philippines shall not lapse into public domain after fifty (50) years from creation and shall continue indefinitely to be the exclusive property of these ethno-linguistic groups that communally own them. Traditional heritage, both tangible and intangible, are to be held in perpetuity in ethnic memory and considered valid as ethnic intellectual property. However, the rights of an ethno-linguistic group to a traditional item will lapse into public domain after fifty (50) years, if it is no longer in production or used in cultural context within the society. While recognizing that traditions change through time, the ethno-linguistic groups shall retain original rights to their intellectual property changing in continuum.

SEC. 7. Registry of Cultural Property. - Under the guidance of the Commission

and National Museum, or any other pertinent national cultural agency, the local government units (LGUs), with the assistance of the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples, shall organize the inventories of cultural properties of the different ethno-linguistic groups of the Philippines that are distinctive, characteristics of or derived from their particular traditional culture, to the exclusion of those of others. The LGUs shall submit the inventories to the Commission, through the

1 National Museum, to establish communal ownership and to be registered under the concerned group's name for protection under existing copyright law. Further, the accomplished registries of the tangible and intangible cultural properties shall be incorporated in the Philippine Registry of Cultural Property as established by Republic Act No. 10066 and administered by the Commission.

SEC. 8. Derivative Work. - The infusion of personal or individual variations on

a traditional object would result in a derivative work or craft, which is one that is 10 primarily a new work but incorporates some previously published material. A derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work" or must contain a substantial amount of new materials. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a pre-existing work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself.

SEC. 9. Deposit and Notice. - Moral rights would vest upon creation; hence,

authorship would have to be established to avail of moral rights such as the right of attribution. Moral rights to ownership of newly created items by members of an ethno-linguistic group should be registered with the Commission for protection under existing copyright laws. Copyright vests from the moment of creation and registration is one of the ways to prove authorship, although it is not exclusive.

SEC. 10. Free, Prior and Informed Consent. - Free, prior and informed consent

for the use of the indigenous peoples' intellectual property should be articulated by a defined authority that is provided with a circumscribed jurisdiction, associated with the culture of an ethno-linguistic group. The corresponding elected official, as the case may be, assisted by cultural experts, shall dispense with the required free, prior and informed consent for the items) in questions for the concerned intellectual property owners.

SEC. 11. Indigenous communal copyright (intellectual property) owners may

designate a society with legal personality to act in their behalf to enforce their economic and moral rights.

SEC. 12. Royalties. - Indigenous communal copyright (intellectual property)

owners shall be compensated for the use of their work. The amount, process of collecting and distributing this royalty and other pertinent details shall be determined by the Commission.

SEC. 13. Appropriations, - For the initial implementation of this Act, the

amount of Fifty Million Pesos (Php 50,000,000.00) is hereby appropriated and shall be sourced from the President's Contingent Fund.

SEC. 14. Penalties. - In additional to the penalties under existing laws, any

person found guilty of violating any provisions of this Act shall be imprisoned for a period not exceeding ten (10) years or imposed a fine not exceeding One Hundred Thousand Pesos (Php 100,000.00), or both at the discretion of the court.

SEC. 15. Implementing Rules and Regulations. - The Commission, in

consultation with other relevant cultural agencies mentioned in this Act, shall promulgate the implementing rules and regulations within ninety (90) days after the effectivity of this Act.

SEC. 16. Repealing Clause. - All existing laws, presidential decrees, executive

orders, proclamations, or administrative regulations that are inconsistent with the provisions of this Act are hereby amended, modified, superseded, or repealed accordingly.

SEC. 17. Separability Clause. - If any provision of this Act shall be held

unconstitutional, the remainder of the Act not otherwise affected shall remain in full force and effect.

SEC. 18. Effectivity Clause. - This Act shall take effect fifteen (15) days after

its publication in the Official Gazette or in at least two (2) newspapers of general circulation. Approved,