1 For an interesting contrast in theoretical views on this topic, supported by similar data sets, see Lopez-Gonzaga, V., Peasants in the Hills (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1983) and Eder, James, On the Road to Tribal Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
2 See, for example, Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
3 Moore, S. Falk, Social Facts and Fabrications. “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro 1880–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Rodman, W., “Gaps, Bridges and Levels of Law: Middlemen as Mediators in a Vanuatu Society”, in Middlemen and Brokers in Oceania, ed. Rodman, W.L. and Counts, D. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), pp. 69–95; Rodman, M., “Masters of Tradition: Customary Land Tenure and New Forms of Social Inequality in a Vanuatu Peasantry”, American Ethnologist 11 (1984): 61–80.
4 This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship and was conducted in 1983–84. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies,Washington, D. C.,March 1989.
5 See Scott, W.H., The Discovery of the Igorots (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1974).
6 Wiber, M. G., “The Canao Imperative: Changes to Resource Control, Stratification and the Economy of Ritual among the Ibaloi, Northern Philippines”, in Changing Lives and Changing Rites: Ritual and Social Dynamics in Philippine and Indonesian Uplands, ed. Russell, Susan and Cunningham, Clark (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989).
7 Bagamaspad, A. and Hamada-Pawid, Z., A People's History of Benguet (Baguio City: Baguio Printing and Publishing, 1985); Prill-Brett, J., “The Bontok: Traditional Wet-Rice and Swidden Cultivators of the Philippines”, in Traditional Agriculture in Southeast Asia. A Human Ecology Perspective, ed. Marten, G.G. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 54–84; J. Prill-Brett, “Preliminary Perspectives on Local Boundaries and Resource Control”, Cordillera Studies Center Working Paper 06 (Baguio City: Cordillera Studies Centre, University of the Philippines Baguio, mans.); Scott, , Discovery; Scott, W.H., History on the Cordillera. Collected Writings on Mountain Province History (Baguio City: Baguio City Printing and Publishing, 1975).
8 Keesing, F. and Keesing, M., Taming Philippine Headhunters (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1934), p. 68.
9 Through the Department of Justice, Land Registration Commission, Torrens titles were granted where a claim was submitted and no competing claimant to the land could be discovered in the records. Claims could also be supported by minimally required improvements to public lands (modeled after the U.S. Homestead Act). Title once granted was indefeasible, that is, tenure was guaranteed for the owner by the power of the state.
10 Keesing, and Keesing, , Philippine Headhunters, p. 163.
12 Scott, , Discovery, pp. 18–19.
14 Prior to 1976, the Philippine government granted water titles in a process similar to land title, that is, title was granted where there was no competing claimant and was thereafter indefeasible. However, after 1976 a new national water code was enacted in which water permits replaced title. These permits were based on an assessment of the litre-per-second consumption of water from the source for each canal intake rather than granting control over an entire source. See Cruz, Ma. Conception, et al. , Legal and Institutional Issues of Irrigation Water Rights in the Philippines (Agrarian Reform Institute, University of the Philippines at Los Banos, 1987).
15 These sanctions included censure by elders, and potentially, corporal punishment by the affected community elite.
16 No one interviewed in the community could identify an indigenous term for communal. Most informants when pressed for a definition said that it referred to resources which everyone was free to use. In the context of irrigation, the disputes over the term's meaning seem to suggest a lack of consensus over any historical, communal property-holding patterns, which is interesting given the property systems of neighbouring upland groups. See Wiber, M. and Prill-Brett, J., “Perfecting Plural Societies: Lessons from the Comparative Study of Property Systems and Jural Disparity in Two Philippine Ethnic Minorities”, Culture 8, no. 1 (1989): 21–34.
17 von Benda-Beckmann, F., “Why Law Does Not Behave: Critical and Constructive Reflections on the Social Scientific Perception of the Social Significance of Law”, Papers of the Symposia on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism (Vancouver, XIth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 1983), pp. 233–62.
18 See Aranal-Sereno, Ma. Lourdes and Libarios, Roan, “The Interface Between National Land Law and Kalinga Land Law”, Philippine Law Journal 58 (1983): 420–56, for a discussion of the doubtful legality of this practice.
19 It is interesting to note that government policy towards native mines was just beginning to undergo change in 1984. One provincial publication made the following announcement by the Provincial Attorney's office: “Gold Panning and Illegal Miners: your Provincial Attorney continues to represent [a list of miner's associations]. We have always taken the position that these groups be allowed to share in nature's bounty.” Anon, “Random Activities”, Sadiay E Dinteg Ja Kuansia. A Periodic Report from the Office of the Provincial Attorney, Benguet Province 1 (1984): 14. Informants tell me that today, gold from native mines is openly sold in Baguio City.
20 von Benda-Beckmann, K., The Broken Stairways to Consensus: Village Courts and State Justice in Minangkabau (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1984), p. 21.
21 See, for example, Moore, , Kilimanjaro.
22 As Scott, Weapons, has noted, many ploys and strategies serve as the “weapons of the weak” in stratified societies.
23 Aranal-Sereno, and Libarios, , “Interface”, p. 438.
24 Bacoling, W.T., “Legally Yours”, Sadiay E Dinteg Ja Kuansia. A Periodic Report From the Office of the Provincial Attorney, Benguet Province 1 (1984): 9–10.
