ANNOUNCEMENT ON CORDILLERA DAY 2009

The CORDILLERA PEOPLES ALLIANCE pleased to invite you to the 25th Cordillera Day celebration this year on April 23-24, 2009. The Cordillera Day celebrations have been spearheaded by the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) since 1985 from the earlier 1981-1985 Macliing Memorials. Except in 1995, the celebrations were held in a single venue or host community as a regionally centralized annual event. As in 1995, this year's Cordillera Day will be a regionally decentralized celebration which means all provinces and CPA chapters will have their own celebrations, held simultaneously on the said dates.

As a decentralized Cordillera Day, each province and chapter will define the specific nature of its own celebration based on the urgent issues and concerns of the province. It serves as an event to further strengthen the unity and struggles of the communities to be able to confront the crisis and challenges they face. The central theme "Strengthen people's solidarity. Intensify the struggle for land, life, and rights" will guide the decentralized celebrations. The central theme carries key issues and concerns for this year's celebration on the following: continuing plunder of our ancestral land resources like big corporate and transnational mining; worsening human rights violations due to militarization, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, and political repression; violation of our people's basic rights to livelihood and welfare; impending charter change; and the global economic crisis and impact to our people. It is expected that each celebration will come up with resolutions and action plans on how to address these burning issues under the central theme.

As in the past celebrations, a registration fee of PhP300 will be collected to help cover food expenses. We also request your written solidarity messages, cultural presentations and experiences you can share based on our theme. We also solicit any financial contribution to help us defray expenses on food, logistics and transportation of grassroots organizations and indigenous communities composing
the bulk of expected delegates in every province.

Kindly send your solidarity message, financial support and confirmation to CPA on or before April 15.

An advisory and program of decentralized Cordillera Day 2009 in the provinces will be issued soon. For clarifications and queries, please contact the Regional Secretariat at cpa@cpaphils.org #