Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) is a regional federation of indigenous peoples in the Cordillera region, Philippines. CPA was founded in June 1984 in Bontoc, Mountain Province. CPA’s pioneers were mainly indigenous leaders and activists who spearheaded the widespread, successful opposition to the World Bank-funded Chico dams project and the commercial logging operations of the Cellophil Resources Corporation. This was during the Marcos dictatorship period, when the government and its corporate partners pursued destructive projects in the Cordillera, coupled with worsening militarisation and political repression.

Through the years, CPA launched sustained information drives, advocacy, campaigns and direct actions on indigenous peoples’ rights. These activities were implemented alongside organising work of various indigenous communities in the region and building their capacity through education seminars, training and various types of assistance. Presently, CPA has expanded to include 220 community organisations, four provincial chapters in Benguet, Mountain Province, Kalinga, and Abra, urban multi-sectoral chapter in Baguio city, inter-municipal chapter in Ifugao and Apayao and sectoral federations of youth, women, elders, peasant and cultural workers. It also has a special chapter encompassing communities traversed by the Abra River–the MACQUITACDG.

Realising IP autonomy in the Cordilleras project innovates and enriches the substance and features of Genuine Regional Autonomy and provide a mechanism for political participation of Cordillera indigenous peoples in the continuing discourse on regional autonomy for the Cordillera with national developments such as House Bill 5343 and proposed shift to federal form of government.

The project provides a mechanism for political participation of Cordillera people in the continuing discourse on regional autonomy for the Cordillera with the above national developments by revisiting the lessons in earlier attempts to create a Cordillera autonomous region (1990, 1998, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2017) including lessons from the experience of the failed experiment of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).