Avid hiker Maria and her boyfriend were among the dozens of travellers who booked a tour of the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo for April 18. Pinatubo, an active volcano, had its last major eruption in 1991, altering the surrounding landscape and producing a scenic crater lake that has since become popular with hikers and travellers.
At Pinatubo’s jump-off point, more than a dozen vehicles packed with tourists, including Maria and her boyfriend, were suddenly blocked by a crowd of locals.
“They started shouting their frustrations,” says Maria, 23, who asked that her real name be withheld after experiencing backlash and online harassment from tour companies after she posted about the incident on social media.
The Indigenous Aetas were protesting their long-standing exclusion from Pinatubo’s tourism gains. Despite the volcano area being recognised as Aeta ancestral land, private tour operators and the local government tourism office have managed sightseeing almost exclusively, with Indigenous locals only employed as occasional freelance guides.
According to tourism officials, standard Pinatubo tours cost about US$125 for a group of five. This includes a US$12 environmental protection fee for the local tourism office and US$8 for an Aeta guide for the day. That latter number is less than the minimum wage, and Aeta protesters say they often receive less, as little as US$6.
Tens of thousands of Aetas live in the Central Luzon region of the Philippines, where Pinatubo lies. Despite being some of the earliest inhabitants of the archipelago in the country, their land rights have gone largely neglected by the state; the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) only issued a certificate of ancestral domain title for the three towns around Pinatubo in 2009.
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The NCIP (National Commission on Indigenous Peoples) misses the point. [We need] genuine recognition of the Aeta and their rights over their ancestral land and territory. More than stakeholders, the Aeta are right holders.
Beverly Longid, spokesperson, Katribu
Aeta leader Chito Balintay says their communities have been “deprived of their rightful share in tourism revenues that has reached hundreds of millions of pesos over the last decade.”
In addition to tours, restaurants and apartments used for holiday rentals have popped up in the area, creating a flourishing industry. The tourism ministry even named the volcano among the country’s “favourite destinations.”
“For too long, our land has been hurting,” Balintay says. “Tour operators, businesses and local officials have been profiting from Pinatubo, all at the expense of us Aetas.”
He says he and other tribal leaders have repeatedly visited the NCIP offices to demand urgent action, but to no avail.
“NCIP’s inaction is troubling. The rights of the Indigenous [people] are dying at the hands of bureaucratic red tape,” Balintay says.
The Aetas say the local tourism office ignored their prior notice about the mid-April barricade of Pinatubo.
A week after the barricade, the NCIP said it had been in talks with the Aetas since October 2024 to ensure they “receive a fair share of tourism benefits.”
It also said that the recent events “underscore the need for meaningful dialogue on ancestral land rights and equitable tourism practices.”
‘They need to be heard’
“I was disappointed about the hike for a little while,” Maria tells Mongabay. “I felt more disappointment in the [local] tourism office and the tour organisers.”
She posted about her experience online, sparking a viral conversation about the exploited Aetas and unscrupulous tourism practices.
Expressing her sympathy for the Aetas, she said, “Just imagine what they’re going through. They need to be heard.”
Local authorities tried to address the barricade, but Maria and other hikers turned back. Later in the day, local police arrived to disperse the Aetas, with videos showing the confrontation turning aggressive. Two protesters were arrested but released that same day with no charges filed.
“If you don’t come with us, we’ll have to force you,” a police officer can be heard saying to the Aetas in a video taken by the protesters.
Beverly Longid of the national Indigenous rights group KATRIBU has demanded that the officers who arrested the protesters be sanctioned. She adds that she holds the NCIP accountable for the historical negligence of the Aeta community.
“The NCIP misses the point,” Longid says. Beyond the calls for compensation, the incident highlights a need for “genuine recognition of the Aeta and their rights over their ancestral land and territory,” she says. “More than stakeholders, the Aeta are rights-holders.”
Maria says that before her tour group left Pinatubo, there was a “bad vibe” as tourism officials tried to defuse the blockade, laughing and joking as if to make light of the Aetas’ demands.
“They tried to scare us, saying the Aetas were carrying bolos. Do they expect them to just stay silent?” she says.
On April 19, the day after the blockade, some tour operators posted “good news” that the “Mount Pinatubo issue” had been resolved by tourism officials and police.
“What right do they have to decide over this land when it’s not even theirs?” Maria says.
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.