Situated in the Sierra Madre Mountain Range, Brgy. Daraitan in Tanay, Rizal, is home to a community deeply rooted and connected in nature, ancestry, and collective identity. One of the Philippine indigenous groups, the Dumagat-Remontado community, serves as the guardian of the ancestral lands that sustain both their livelihood and culture. Now, their ancestral lands face the threat of eradication due to the controversial Kaliwa Dam project.

The Kaliwa Dam is a large-scale infrastructure project intended to address Metro Manila’s water shortage by harnessing water from the Kaliwa River, which runs through parts of Quezon and Rizal provinces. If completed, the project is expected to create a massive reservoir that would inundate portions of Brgy. Daraitan and surrounding areas, directly affecting Indigenous communities, homes, schools, farms, and sacred sites within the Sierra Madre.

Despite the looming threat of the development of the Kaliwa Dam and the unprecedented changes brought by the influx of tourists and resettlers, the Dumagat and Dumagat-Remontado continue to thrive in Daraitan. Their lifestyle reflects a balance between tradition and modernity. Some katutubo live farther down the river as farmers and fishermen, while have settled closer to the town proper, where they have taken up jobs in small businesses and assumed positions in the local government.

Fishing and farming remain the central means of survival in Daraitan. Guided by ancestral knowledge passed down through generations, the Dumagat and Dumagat-Remontado cultivated their agricultural practices in land and sea with deep respect for nature.

However, the construction of the Kaliwa Dam threatens to submerge their farmlands, rivers, and sacred sites. It may force families to leave their ancestral land, destroy food sources, and weaken their way of life. Such displacement risks erasing traditions that sustain both their livelihoods and cultural identity.

Deeply connected with the land’s natural resources, their way of life extends to the steep mountain trails, where commerce moves at the pace of small caravans of men and horses. Bridging the remote upland farms to the village, some travel hour-long treks hauling 200 kgs of goods such as copra and vegetables. This labor provides the only means to transport the harvest from the mountains to the market.

Access to healthcare in Daraitan remains limited. The barangay health center, located across the barangay hall, serves as the community’s sole facility for basic healthcare. Serving hundreds of families, yet it operates without a permanent nurse, leaving essential maternal, child, and general medical care limited and inadequately addressed.

Pasion trained in Manila, but returned to Daraitan due to the lack of accessible healthcare in the area. Serving as the primary responder for her neighbors, practicing and preserving hilot – a traditional form of healing, using ancestral knowledge and native herbs. Through her work, healthcare remains available in the uplands where formal medical services are scarce.

Faith also plays an important role in the community. Catholic residents of Daraitan practice their faith at the San Jose Ama Chapel, a nearly 200-year-old church where mass and worship services are held every Sunday. Though renovated and expanded to accommodate more parishioners, the chapel’s original stone walls remain, standing as a testament to its history and enduring faith.

The elementary school in Daraitan, Tanay, Rizal stands closed on weekends – its gates locked and classrooms silent. The stillness of the compound contrasts sharply with the life unfolding outside its walls. Despite the heavy rain, children run along muddy streets: some with backpacks still slung over their shoulders, others sent on errands, and a few simply making their way home.

Daraitan is a tight-knit community where children move freely and feel secure walking alone around the barangay. Strangers are rarely met with fear, as tourism also flourishes in the area. In a quiet gesture of care, one child even offered a plastic bag to shield the camera from the rain.

Surrounded by natural beauty yet shaped by looming uncertainty, more than 10,000 students continue their daily lives in Daraitan’s primary and secondary levels. For now, the children remain unaware of the scale of what lies ahead.

Catameyo, along with many other Dumagat-Remontado leaders and activists, strongly opposes the Kaliwa Dam, warning that the project would severely disrupt their lives and other nearby communities. He said that if residents are forced to leave their homes to make way for the dam, the government must provide proper relocation, including a decent house and land for farming.

“Kung matutuloy ang dam, mawawala rin kami. mamamatay ang mga tao,” Catameyo lamented.

Ma. Clara Dullas, the president of the Kababaihang Dumagat ng Sierra Madre (KGAT), grounds her leadership in her identity as a katutubong Dela Cruz, one of the three original clans in Daraitan.

She explains that their lineage traces back to the earliest settlers, noting, “Kami yung katutubo, Dela Cruz… sa aming katutubo, ang dugo ang basihan ng katandaan, hindi ang edad.”

As a founding leader of KGAT, she shared that the organization was founded in 2019 after realizing that advocacy alone was not enough: “Eh, naisip namin eh puro advocacy… kailangan talaga magkaroon ng livelihood para mas sustained ang advocacy.”

Often representing the Dumagat-Remontado community on a bigger scale, Ma. Clara emphasized the responsibility of speaking out not just for herself, but for others who cannot, saying, “Hindi lahat ng tao ay may kakayahan na magsalita… kaya kami yung nagsasalita.”

For Dumagat-Remontado indigenous leader Ka Nato, the resistance against the Kaliwa Dam is not a rejection of progress, but a call for development that does not erase, displace, or inundate the ancestral lands and communities in its path. Their struggle asserts that progress should not come at the cost of identity, memory, and survival – values deeply rooted in the Sierra Madre long before modern infrastructure projects were conceived.

This resistance is echoed in the voice of Ma. Clara, whose advocacy is grounded in lineage and lived experience. She warns that the project threatens not only communities but the natural world itself: “Kalikasan yung sinisira – mismo ang kalikasan na magpapakita na hindi na dapat ginagawa ito.”

She reminds us that nature is not separate from human life, emphasizing, “Lahat tayo ay umaasa sa may likha. Hindi tayo nabubuhay para lang sa atin; nabubuhay tayo para sa lahat.” In her words, the struggle against the Kaliwa Dam becomes a collective responsibility – one that calls for stewardship, accountability, and respect for both people and the environment.

Their fight against the Kaliwa Dam and other environmentally destructive projects is about the fathers and mothers of their community wanting their children to grow up knowing about the mountains of Sierra Madre, about their healers who refuse to abandon the techniques of their ancestors, and their bloodline that has long fought for their community to stand its ground in the heart of Sierra Madre.

[Editors’ Note: This photographic essay was produced by photojournalism students of the Department of Journalism, UP Diliman College of Media and Communication in November 2025.]