Bontoc Declaration: Stewardship and Sacred Responsibility

Summary

From June 17 through June 20, 2025, over 60 indigenous leaders and advocates from the Philippines, including Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, met and signed the Bontoc Declaration. The Bontoc Declaration recognizes signatories’ collective commitment to upholding the rights of nature, protecting ancestral domains, and honoring Mother Nature.

The Declaration establishes seven commitments of indigenous community leaders. The first commitment is to protect and defend the rights of nature, affirming that “nature has the right to exist, to thrive, and to regenerate.” The second commitment is to safeguard ancestral domains, including “ancestral lands, rivers, and sacred sites.” The third commitment is to practice indigenous stewardship by striving to “preserve, revive, and strengthen our system of indigenous knowledge and practices.” The fourth commitment is to resist ecological harm and climate crisis by uniting “against all forms of environmental destruction, such as activities outside of indigenous traditions, deforestation, mining, pollution, land-use changes, and land grabbing.” The fifth commitment is to strengthen the indigenous peoples’ political structure and right to self-determination. The sixth commitment is to protect sacred areas, including “sacred mountains, rivers, springs, forests, burial grounds, and ritual spaces from destruction and commodification.” The seventh commitment is to defend environmental defenders “and the communities that are resisting injustice, ecological destruction, and exploitation.”