From June 1-3, 1984 in Bontoc, Mountain Province, representatives from sectoral and community organizations from various parts of the Cordillera met in a peoples' congress. They discussed the problems they faced as indigenous national minorities, and the proposed peoples' alternative, which is to forge a broad-based alliance of peoples' organizations. An alliance that would work for the realization of an indigenous peoples' program for the defense of ancestral domain and for self-determination of the Kaigorotan.
That is how the alliance came about, with it's full name, Cordillera Peoples' Alliance for the defense of ancestral domain and for self-determination or simply CPA.