Igorot Global Organization
www.igorotglobal.org/cms

A great granddaughter of the Ibaloi hero Mateo Carino, Baket Cecile was the first Igorot woman writer and scholar to the united States under the Amotten Mundt Fulbright Scholarship. She started the internationally famous Baguio Midland Courier, which is now on its 60th year.

As editor of the Baguio Midland Courier, she was awarded the best-edited community paper. For 22 years, Midland became the most awarded community paper in the Philippines.

She later on organized the Mateo Carino Foundation to start a research on ancestral lands.

It will be recalled that the ‘Americanization of the Igorot and his land' began on the property of Mateo Carino known to him and his ancestors as YPIT and LUBAS now called Camp John Hay. FLAG lawyer Atty. Pablito Sanidad, counsel for the heirs of Mateo Carino wrote a position paper that is revealing enough to be quoted at some length:
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In a shocking and oppressive display of paramount power and force, disguised as an alleged act of legislation, Mateo Carino was not only dispossessed of the area now known as Camp John hay, he was even LEGISLATED OUT OF HIS HOUSE!

Thus, in 1903, and while allegedly awaiting clearer plans for the Baguio town site and the military reservation, but in order to insure that Mateo Carino was effectively driven away from his house and neighboring lands, the Philippines Commission, a body originally composed of Americans and alleged by authority of the united States government, enacted ACT No. 636.
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3. And that it belonged to MATEO CARINO.
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Thus, Mateo Carino became a National Hero.

She also started the Benguet-Ifugao-Bontoc-Apayao-kalinga (BIBAK) organization to unite the Cordillera. Apart from uniting Igorots, she set up the Mountain Province Museum in Baguio as well as the first Girl Scout Movement in the Cordillera. As founder of the First Women's Club, she received an award as outstanding Pan-pacific Leader of the Cordillera.

Finally, she won previous awards for environment and for best editorial by the Philippine Press Institute and Adenueur Foundation of Germany.