Macario Lacbawan

I received my formal training in social anthropology and cultural sociology. My work focuses on emerging environmental processes and relations that define contemporary experiences of indigeneity. For example, I analyze the entanglement and intersection of indigeneity and climate change to understand how indigenous lives become ineligible and absent as subjects with claims to recognition. I do this by describing how efforts to conserve the environment from further damage—such as the creation of wildlife sanctuaries and smart, technologically advanced green cities—necessitate the dislocation and expulsion of indigenous people from their land in the Philippines.

In my previous work, I studied the violent repercussions of these acts of expulsion by analyzing the birth of an indigenous rebel movement in the Cordillera Region of the Philippines. I have also conducted long-term ethnographic research among the Ikalahan communities of the Caraballo Mountains to understand how these communities cope with the green demands that accompany their recognition as an indigenous community.