History

Brief general historical account
 
The Philippines was extensively settled by Austronesian-speaking Neolithic and later metal-age peoples from 3,500 BCE onwards, from the Asia mainland and neighboring island chains. It was a Spanish colony (except for much of Mindanao-Sulu) from the 16th to the end of the19th century. Spanish-era Philippines subsisted on a feudal economy based on encomiendas and the Mexican galleon trade, and later based on export-crop haciendas.
 
In 1898, while the Filipino revolution advanced to victory, Spain hastily ceded the entire country to the U.S. In the next 40 years, the U.S. suppressed nationalist, Muslim and indigenous armed resistance, and ruled the country as a colony with a modified feudal economy to suit its free-trade needs. A US-sponsored commonwealth was formed in 1935. Following the Japanese occupation in World War II, the Philippines became an independent republic in 1946. A number of military and economic treaties enabled the U.S. to protect its business interests and military presence in the country.
 
Over the past 60 years, the republic has undergone major challenges that have included a persistent communist-led insurgency, Moro-Islamic separatism, the 1972-1986 Marcos dictatorship, two People Power revolts, military unrest, a worsening economic crisis, and unabated outflow of overseas Filipino workers.
 
Historical developments of importance to indigenous peoples 
 
A doubtful theory, first elaborated in the 1920s, claims that successive waves of pre-Spanish migrations into the country produced a ready-made patchwork of distinct peoples, implying that the differences between indigenous peoples and non-indigenous peoples have deep prehistoric roots. This wave-migration theory remains fixed in the public mind but is now rejected by most scholars of Philippine prehistory.
 
More likely, the settlement of the archipelago's many islands by Australoid and later by Austronesian-speaking peoples over 5,000 years was a very gradual process that worked in many directions. This created a continuum of physical and cultural-linguistic variation throughout the islands. Ethnic differences in pre-Spanish times were thus not big enough to become long-term distinctions between indigenous peoples and non-indigenous peoples.
 
It was the centuries of Spanish rule that drew marked divisions between two types of native communities: between Christianized and pagan peoples, between "tamed" and "wild" tribes.
 
Ethnic groups in the lowlands and coastal areas of Luzon and Visayas were effectively subjugated (e.g. the Ilokano, Pangasinan, Pampango, Tagalog, Bikol, Sebuano and Ilonggo). Centuries of absorption into the Spanish colonial-feudal system had a strong impact on their local ways of life and produced many commonalities. They ultimately comprised the majority of the Filipino people.
 
On the other hand, communities in Northern Luzon, the Mindanao highlands, Islamized areas of Mindanao-Sulu and far flung islands from Batanes to Palawan were only partially or belatedly conquered, if at all. Even as they suffered dispersal and marginalization, they retained much of pre-colonial ways of life, as reflected in indigenous patterns of production and land ownership, socio-political structures, and cultural beliefs and practices. They ultimately comprised the indigenous peoples of the country.
 
Under U.S.-imposed colonial laws and various "national integration" programs, the indigenous peoples were hastily incorporated into the national body politic. But these laws and programs did not recognize basic indigenous peoples' rights to equality and self-determination, and generally condoned anti-indigenous practices. The opening up of frontier areas for resettlement and extractive industries from the 1930s to 1950s, especially in Northern Luzon and Mindanao, led to massive dislocation of indigenous groups and loss of their ancestral lands.
 
Under the long Marcos era (1966-1986), the situation of indigenous peoples further deteriorated. In the Moro and Lumad areas of Mindanao-Sulu, in the Cordillera, in Mindoro's Mangyan areas and elsewhere, large-scale land-grabbing, destructive government projects and human rights abuses generated mass resistance through legal and armed means. Many indigenous peoples' organizations and advocacy groups were formed during this period.
 
The downfall of the Marcos dictatorship led to some political reforms, among which were provisions in the 1987 Constitution that explicitly recognized indigenous peoples' rights to ancestral land and regional autonomy.