Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction iii Abbreviations v Malampaya Sound as Conservation Site 1 The Tagbanua as Indigenous People 4 Traditional Resource-Use of the Tagbanua Malampaya Sound: An Overview 7 Resource-Use for Food Production 14 Resource-Use in Life Stages Transition 57 Medicine and Magic 65 Food, Drinks, Smoke and Chew 75 Crafts 83 House Building 90 Sustainability of the Resource Management 99 Belief System Underpinning the Resource-Use 103 Outside Interventions and Its Outcome 113 Impact of Outside Interventions on the Traditional Lifeways and the Environment 122 Indigenous People in Conservation 142 Concluding Notes 149 Note on the Data Collection 151 Appendices 153 Glossary 173 References 187.

The Tagbanua, the indigenous peoples in Malampaya Sound in Northern Palawan, kept their forests, rivers and coasts in almost pristine state for thousands of years. Underpinned by the belief that the natural environment is a spiritual world, they evolved ways of life that maintain all its ecological processes and nurture all its life forms. Woven into theor endeavors - from routine food production activities to their passage of life cycle stages of birth, marriage and death - are strategies that safeguard the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the population and diversity of species. While struggling to survive in the modern world and the advancing forces of short-sighted and short-term economic interests, the Tagbanua showed that we can live on nature without destroying it. The lessons that they teach through their ways of life provide direction to the world gripped in resource scarcity and environmental crisis. These lessons, distilled through generations of living with nature, point out that the solutions to present problems and the key to future survival are with the people who carry with them the strategies of the past.