Ethnic groups in the Philippines

Dominant ethnic groups by province.

The Philippines is inhabited by more than 182 ethnolinguistic groups,[1]: 5  many of which are classified as "Indigenous Peoples" under the country's Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997. Traditionally-Muslim peoples from the southernmost island group of Mindanao are usually categorized together as Moro peoples, whether they are classified as Indigenous peoples or not. About 142 are classified as non-Muslim Indigenous people groups, and about 19 ethnolinguistic groups are classified as neither Indigenous nor Moro.[1]: 6  Various migrant groups have also had a significant presence throughout the country's history.

The Muslim-majority ethnic groups ethnolinguistic groups of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan are collectively referred to as the Moro people,[2] a broad category that includes some Indigenous people groups and some non-Indigenous people groups.[1]: 6  With a population of over 5 million people, they comprise about 5% of the country's total population.[3][4] The Spanish called them Moros after the Moors, despite no resemblance or cultural ties to them apart from their religion.

About 142 of the Philippines' Indigenous people groups are not classified as Moro peoples.[1]: 6  Some of these people groups are commonly grouped together due to their strong association with a shared geographic area, although these broad categorizations are not always welcomed by the ethnic groups themselves.[5][6][7] For example, the Indigenous peoples of the Cordillera Mountain Range in northern Luzon are often referred to using the exonym[5] "Igorot people," or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples.[5] Meanwhile, the non-Moro peoples of Mindanao are collectively referred to as the Lumad, a collective autonym conceived in 1986 as a way to distinguish them from their neighboring Indigenous Moro and Visayan neighbors.[8] Small Indigenous ethnic communities remain marginalized, and often poorer than the rest of society.[9]

About 86 to 87 percent of the Philippine population belong to the 19 ethnolinguistic groups are classified as neither Indigenous nor Moro.[1]: 6  These groups are sometimes collectively referred to as "Lowland Christianized groups," to distinguish them from the other ethnolinguistic groups.[10] The most populous of these groups, with populations exceeding a million individuals, are the Ilocano, the Pangasinense, the Kapampangan, the Tagalog, the Bicolano, and the Visayans (including the Cebuano, the Boholano, the Hiligaynon/Ilonggo, and the Waray).[1]: 16  Many of these groups converted to Christianity,[citation needed] particularly both the native and migrant lowland-coastal groups,[11] and adopted foreign elements of culture throughout the country's history.[citation needed]

Due to the past history of the Philippines since the Spanish colonial era, there are also some historical migrant heritage groups such as the Chinese Filipinos and Spanish Filipinos, both of whom intermixed with the above lowland Austronesian-speaking ethnic groups, which produced Filipino Mestizos. These groups also comprise and contribute a considerable proportion of the country's population,[12] especially its bourgeois,[13] and economy[13][14][15][16] and were integral to the establishment of the country,[11] from the rise of Filipino nationalism by the Ilustrado intelligentsia to the Philippine Revolution.[17] Other peoples of migrant and/or mixed descent include American Filipinos, Indian Filipinos,[18] and Japanese Filipinos.[19]

Aside from migrant groups which speak their own languages, most Filipinos speak languages classified under the Austronesian language family, including the various Negrito peoples of the archipelago, which are genetically and phenotypically distinct from the other ethnic groups of the Philippines.[20] While these groups have maintained a culture and identity distinct from neighboring ethnic groups, they have long adapted their neighbors' Austronesian languages.[21] Traditionally subcategorized geographically as the Ati people of Visayas and Mindanao, and the Aeta of Luzon, the Negrito population was estimated at 31,000 as of 2004.[22]

  1. ^ a b c d e f Reyes, Cecilia M.; Mina, Christian D.; Asis, Ronina D. (2017). PIDS DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES: Inequality of Opportunities Among Ethnic Groups in the Philippines (PDF) (Report). Philippine Institute for Development Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 8, 2020. Retrieved October 28, 2021.
  2. ^ Kamlian, Jamail A. (October 20, 2012). "Who are the Moro people?". Archived from the original on March 22, 2023. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
  3. ^ Philippines. 2013 Report on International Religious Freedom (Report). United States Department of State. July 28, 2014. SECTION I. RELIGIOUS DEMOGRAPHY. Archived from the original on May 26, 2019. Retrieved October 29, 2021. The 2000 survey states that Islam is the largest minority religion, constituting approximately 5 percent of the population. A 2012 estimate by the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF), however, states that there are 10.7 million Muslims, which is approximately 11 percent of the total population.
  4. ^ "Philippines". U.S. Department of State. Archived from the original on October 5, 2020. Retrieved October 29, 2021.
  5. ^ a b c Acabado, Stephen (March 2017). "The Archaeology of Pericolonialism: Responses of the "Unconquered" to Spanish Conquest and Colonialism in Ifugao, Philippines". International Journal of Historical Archaeology. 21 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1007/s10761-016-0342-9. ISSN 1092-7697. S2CID 147472482.
  6. ^ Moaje, Marita (March 4, 2021). "Drop 'lumad', use ethnic group names instead: NCIP". Philippine News Agency. Archived from the original on March 5, 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2021.
  7. ^ National Statistics Office. “Statistics on Filipino Children.” Journal of Philippine Statistics, vol. 59, no. 4, 2008, p. 119.
  8. ^ Ulindang, Faina. "Lumad in Mindanao". National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
  9. ^ Banlaoi, Rommel (October 13, 2009). Philippine Security in the Age of Terror: National, Regional, and Global Challenges in the Post-9/11 World. CRC Press. p. 32. ISBN 9781439815519. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  10. ^ Canave-Dioquino, Corazon. "Philippine Music, A Historical Overview". National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Archived from the original on November 26, 2020. Retrieved November 5, 2021.
  11. ^ a b Tan, Antonio S. (1986). "The Chinese Mestizos and the Formation of the Filipino Nationality". Archipel. 32: 141–162. doi:10.3406/arch.1986.2316. Archived from the original on October 20, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2021 – via Persée.
  12. ^ Macrohon, Pilar (January 21, 2013). "Senate declares Chinese New Year as special working holiday" (Press release). PRIB, Office of the Senate Secretary, Senate of the Philippines. Archived from the original on May 16, 2021.
  13. ^ a b Chirot, Daniel; Reid, Anthony (1997). Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe. University of Washington Press. p. 54. ISBN 9780295800264. Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
  14. ^ Chua, Amy (2003). World On Fire. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. pp. 3, 6. ISBN 978-0385721868.
  15. ^ Gambe, Annabelle (2000). Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 33. ISBN 978-0312234966.
  16. ^ Folk, Brian (2003). Ethnic Business: Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Routledge. p. 93. ISBN 978-1138811072.
  17. ^ Chirot, Daniel; Reid, Anthony (1997). Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe. University of Washington Press. p. 50. ISBN 9780295800264. Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. Retrieved October 26, 2021.
  18. ^ "With a sample population of 105 Filipinos, the company of Applied Biosystems, analysed the Y-DNA of average Filipinos and it is discovered that about 0.95% of the samples have the Y-DNA Haplotype "H1a", which is most common in South Asia and had spread to the Philippines via precolonial Indian missionaries who spread Hinduism". Archived from the original on May 25, 2017. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  19. ^ Agnote, Dario (October 11, 2017). "A glimmer of hope for castoffs". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved August 9, 2016.
  20. ^ Jinam, Timothy A.; Phipps, Maude E.; Aghakhanian, Farhang; Majumder, Partha P.; Datar, Francisco; Stoneking, Mark; Sawai, Hiromi; Nishida, Nao; Tokunaga, Katsushi; Kawamura, Shoji; Omoto, Keiichi (August 2017). "Discerning the Origins of the Negritos, First Sundaland People: Deep Divergence and Archaic Admixture". Genome Biology and Evolution. 9 (8): 2013–2022. doi:10.1093/gbe/evx118. ISSN 1759-6653. PMC 5597900. PMID 28854687. Archived from the original on January 21, 2022. Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  21. ^ Reid, Lawrence (November 27, 2013). "Who Are the Philippine Negritos? Evidence from Language". Human Biology. 85 (1): 329–358. doi:10.3378/027.085.0316. ISSN 0018-7143. PMID 24297232. S2CID 8341240. Archived from the original on August 14, 2023. Retrieved October 25, 2021.
  22. ^ Adelaar, K Alexander; Himmelmann, Nikolaus, eds. (2005). The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. Psychology Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-7007-1286-1. Retrieved August 15, 2014.