Sabangkawayan, Philippines – Two hours’ drive north of the capital, Manila, on a sprawling site of a former U.S. military base, the Philippine government is moving ahead with a multibillion-dollar “smart city” plan that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. hopes will turn into a future “tourist mecca” and “investor magnet.”

New Clark City, built on the site of the former Clark Air Force Base, is at the center of the government’s efforts to attract foreign investment and ease congestion in Manila, home to nearly 15 million people.

To match the city’s growth, the government is also planning a series of ambitious projects at the nearby airport complex – new train lines, an expanded airport runway and a $515 million stadium that officials hope will be enough to attract global pop star Taylor Swift.

The Aita Aboriginal village of Sapang Kawayan is located between the rising new town and the proposed stadium. For the approximately 500 families who live in nipa and rattan houses, these developments spell disaster.

“We were here before the Americans, even before the Spanish,” said Petronila Capiz, 60, chief of the Aeta Hungey tribe in Sapang Kawayan. “Our land continues to be taken away from us.”

Historians say American colonists seized the Philippines from Spain in 1898, taking over 32,000 hectares (80,000 acres) of land that became Clark Air Force Base in the 1920s and dispossessing the land of the Aeta people, a semi-nomadic, dark-skinned people believed to be among the archipelago’s earliest inhabitants.

Many were displaced, but some penetrated deep into the base jungle and were hired as laborers.

The United States turned the base over to the Philippine government in 1991, some forty years after Philippine independence. Thereafter, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) managed the complex. It is believed that there are still about 20,000 Aita people living in the Clark area, distributed in 32 villages.

But most of their claims to the land have not been recognized.

In Sapang Kawayan, residents fear the government’s development rush means they could be evicted before they can make such a claim. The community, along with other Aeta villages in Clark, is working with researchers from the University of the Philippines to expedite their application for the long-pending Certificate of Ancestral Domain Names (CADT) – the only legal mechanism that allows them to assert rights to their territory and its resources.

In January, July and September, Aita people, young and old, gather under makeshift wooden sheds at Sapang Kawayan to compile family trees and share stories and photos. Volunteers documented every detail, hoping to prove that the communities there predated colonial rule.

Their 17,000 hectares overlap almost entirely with the 9,450 hectares earmarked for New Clark City, while 14 kilometers to the south is the airport complex where new rail lines, runways and a stadium will be built.

The new city and airport complex “will eat up the fields we farm, the rivers we fish in and the mountains we get our medicinal herbs from,” Capiz said.

“Taylor Swift is ready”

Plans for New Clark City were first announced by the Philippine government under then-President Rodrigo Duterte as a solution to Metro Manila’s severe congestion problems. The BCDA describes the development as a “green, smart and disaster-resilient metropolis”.

Construction began in 2018 on major roads and a sports center to host the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.

The city is designed to accommodate 1.2 million people and is expected to take at least 30 years to complete.

The BCDA is currently building three highways to connect the city of New Clark to the airport complex, where it plans to build a “Taylor Swift” stadium. Swift skipped the Philippines last year during the South Asian leg of the Eras tour, with officials touting the stadium, which is due to be built in 2028, as a draw for Swift.

BCDA President Joshua Bingcang said this year that “one of the main things that makes Clark so attractive to investors is its unparalleled connectivity,” citing the airport, nearby seaport and major highways. “But we need to further enhance this connectivity and invest in infrastructure.”

This expansion has come at a cost to the Aeta community.

Research group Counter-Mapping PH and activists estimate that hundreds of Aeta families have been displaced since city construction began, including dozens who moved out “voluntarily” just a week before the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.

Thousands more people could be uprooted as development continues, they warn.

BCDA has provided financial compensation and resettlement of US$0.51 per square meter to affected families. In July, ground was broken on 840 housing units, but it’s unclear whether they are for displaced Aita people.

The agency insists no displacement has occurred because Aitas has not confirmed legal rights to the area. In a statement to Al Jazeera, the BCDA said it “upholds the welfare and rights of indigenous peoples” and acknowledged their “long-standing presence” in central Luzon, where Clark is located. However, the report noted that Clark’s boundaries follow “long-established government ownership” dating back to U.S. military bases and that the new Clark City would not infringe on any recognized ancestral territory.

The BCDA also claims that the National Council of Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) handles applications for ancestral domain certificates, stressing that it respects “the lands granted to Aboriginal peoples.”

Clark International Airport Corporation, which oversees the airport complex, gave similar assurances, saying “no families or communities exist at the site.” The group added that while there is an Aeta community in Clark Extension, no community exists within the airport complex.

“Since ancient times”

Only a few Aeta tribes received CADT.

Suburban Clark has received two certificates, while applications from Sapang Kawayan and other villages on the base have been stalled since 1986.

Marcial Lengao, head of NCIP’s Tarlac office, told Al Jazeera that for Clark’s Aitas to be granted a CADT, they must “prove that they have been there since time immemorial,” that is, during or before the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the archipelago 400 years ago.

He said the committee set out the minimum requirements for CADT: a family tree of at least five clans dating back at least three generations or pre-colonial times, testimonies of elders, domain maps and current census.

Lengao said Sapang Kawayan’s application has not yet been completed.

But even if the application is approved, the village faces another unique obstacle. Because the BCDA owns land rights in Clark, any CADT approved by the commission in the area must be reviewed by the executive branch or the office of the president.

“They will be responsible for finding win-win solutions,” Lundgau said.

However, activists have decried NCIP’s requirements as being too onerous and warned that the longer the Aita people go without CADT, the more vulnerable they are to losing their land.

“Without CADT and real recognition from the government, the Aita people will continue to be treated like squatters on their own land,” said Pia Montalban of local rights group Kalapatan-Central Luzon.

“One of the most abused indigenous Filipinos”

The Aita people rely on small-scale subsistence farming and are one of the most disenfranchised indigenous peoples in Philippine history. There are no official figures on the Aeta population, but the government considers them to be a small minority of the Philippines’ indigenous people, numbering tens of thousands across the country.

The Aita Tribal Foundation describes them as one of the “poorest and least educated” groups in the country.

“They are among the most mistreated indigenous peoples in the Philippines,” said Jeremiah Silvestre, an expert in indigenous psychology who worked closely with the Aeta community while teaching at Tarlac State University until 2022. “Partly because of their kind culture, many people take advantage of the Aitas. Worse still, the land they live on continues to be taken away from them.”

Sylvester also described the CADT process as “unnecessarily academic” and said it requires Aboriginal elders to provide full family trees and detailed maps to government officials, which he likened to “defending your thesis.”

He noted that changes in government personnel could restart the entire process.

A World Bank report last year found that indigenous peoples in the Philippines “often face insurmountable bureaucratic obstacles in dealing with CADT.” The report says recognizing and protecting indigenous land rights is “a critical step in addressing poverty and conflict.”

For Sapang Kawayan’s family, experts worry the lack of formal recognition could lead to displacement and homelessness.

“There’s no safety net,” Sylvester said. “If this continues, we may see more Aita people begging on the streets. Systemic poverty will also mean the loss of Aboriginal culture.”

Victor Valantin, the mandatory indigenous representative for Tarlac province, which includes parts of Clark, worries that the Atta territory at the former base is shrinking as new projects accelerate.

“We have to keep moving,” he said. “The mall won’t move for us.”

Valentin went on to lament what he saw as a common imbalance.

“The BCDA project is moving so fast,” he said. “But anything is going to be very slow for us.”