Dutu Mantangkilan Cumantang (The Philippines, 2011-2013), also known as Amay (“Father”), is a well-respected figure, not only within the community of Mintapod, where he is the Datu (Leader), but also among all the Higaonon people, northern Mindanao Island. He was awarded the Field Fellowship on the basis of his long-standing and profound commitment to social and environmental renewal among his people and, especially, for his efforts at securing the protection of Mt. Kimangkil, a sacred mountain to the Higaonon and the source of all the island’s major rivers. Active and peaceful opposition to. commercial logging, mining, oil palm plantations and violent insurgency has come at a cost for Amay and his allies: over the years a number of leaders have been murdered or injured and Amay has had to go into hiding several times. During his time as Field Fellow Amay worked to strengthen customary law, promoting its transmission to the younger generation and its application to securing their social well-being, livelihoods and territory.
Johannes Henricus “Jenne” de Beer (The Phillipines, 2009-2011) is widely considered to be the “father” of the Non-Timber Forest Products movement by his Southeast Asian collaborators. Through his work as a researcher, advocate and writer he drew global attention to the key contribution of forest products for local livelihoods and their huge potential for sustainable development. His extensive work at the grassroots level throughout southeast Asia not only helped develop a critical understanding of this sector, but also directly served to empower forest-based communities, helping them mobilize around the use of their forest resources to protect their ancestral homelands and guarantee the sustainable utilization of forest resources. During his Fellowship Jenne continued to work in support of the long-term resource and land rights for indigenous peoples in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and the greater Mekong region, focusing on the role and potential of traditional foodways in social and environmental renewal.
Miguel Alexiades (Peru and Bolivia, 2004-2006) was the first ISE Darrell Posey Field Fellow. An anthropologist and ethnobotanist by training, Miguel Alexiades has worked with Ese Eja peoples in the border regions of pre-Andean Amazonian Peru and Bolivia, since 1985, always with the intent of developing the potential synergies that exist between research and advocacy, between understanding and social change. Working closely to with the regional indigenous federation FENAMAD (Federación del Río Madre de Dios y Afluentes) Miguel helped establish a number of different initiatives relating to the revival and application indigenous knowledge in health, social and environmental well-being. The Darrell Posey Field Fellowship supported his work helping the Ese eja map and document the social knowledge linked to their traditional homelands in order to support a number of claims relating to resource and land rights, serving as a means to redress some of the effects of social and territorial fragmentation that followed from the colonization of the area last century.