Definition
Ethnicity is a primary sense of belonging to an ethnic group. Ethnic group is consanguine in nature, meaning, the ties are reckoned by blood and traced through the family tree. Thus, ethnicity refers to the household member's identity, by blood and not by choice nor by adoption/confirmation for any ethnic group, primarily the Indigenous Peoples (IPs).
Generally, ethnic grouping denotes genealogical and paternal lineage to any of the Philippines' group of native population. However, for the purpose of 2010 CPH, ethnic grouping also includes maternal lineage. As such, anybody whose consanguinity with both parents or any of them, who is/are member/s of an IP group, is an Indigenous Person.
As defined in Section 3h, Chapter II, of Republic Act No. 8371, otherwise known as the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA), IPs refer to a group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed, and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions, and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social, and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. IPs likewise include peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, at the time of conquest or colonization, or at the time of inroads of non-indigenous and cultures, or the establishment of present state boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural, and political institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may have resettled outside their ancestral domains.