ON Nov. 8, 2018, then-president Rodrigo Duterte personally distributed certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) to 44 families of the Ati indigenous cultural community in Barangay Manoc-Manoc, Boracay, Aklan. Duterte reminded the recipients that they had to wait at least 10 years before they could mortgage or sell the land. 'In the meantime, till the land, make it productive, and when the prohibition period is over, maybe your children can sell it, and it would be million[s of pesos],' the president said in his message (GMA, Nov. 8, 2018). 'We join the Ati tribe ... in thanking the president for this gift. It is but fitting to cap the first phase of the island's rehab with the awarding of CLOAs that secure ownership of their land,' then-environment secretary Roy Cimatu was quoted as saying (press release, DENR website). The Ati community members' lives as farmer-beneficiaries, however, were to be short-lived. There was no 'secure ownership' of the land.