In commemoration of the 37th Peoples’ Cordillera Day, an online storytelling featuring the life of Cordillera hero, Apo Macliing Dulag was held last week.
Dulag was a celebrated tribal leader who led the people’s resistance against the controversial Chico Dam during the Marcos dictatorship.
On April 24, 1980, he was killed by the military.
In a book called
The Pangat The Mountains, and the River written by Luz B. Maranan, Macliing’s story of fighting against the government’s development plan which would displace 100,000 indigenous people in the Cordillera.
During the online program, Maranan said it was important to highlight Dulag’s story as his life embodied not just the fight of the Cordillera people but what it meant to be a hero nowadays, for having defeated a dictator and a destructive project like the Chico Dam.