Ati people

The Ati are a Negrito ethnic group and indigenous peoples in the Visayan Islands of the Philippines. Their small numbers are principally concentrated on the islands of Boracay, Panay and Negros. They are genetically related to other Negrito ethnic groups in the Philippines such as the Aeta of Luzon, the Batak of Palawan, the Agta of the Sierra Madres, and the Mamanwa of Mindanao.

The Negritos are the descendants of the same early East Eurasian meta-population, which also gave rise to modern East Asians and Australasians, among other populations of the Asia-Pacific region. The earliest modern human migrations into the Philippine archipelago were during the Paleolithic, around 40,000 years ago, followed by two other migration waves between 25,000 and 12,000 years ago, through the Sundaland land bridges that linked the islands with the Asian mainland. The latest migration wave is associated with the Austronesian peoples (c. 7,000 years ago) from Taiwan. The Philippine Negritos display relatively closer genetic affinity towards different Eastern Asian populations, prehistoric Hoabinhian samples, as well as to the Indigenous people of New Guinea and Aboriginal Australians, from which they diverged around c. 40,000 years ago, and also display genetic substructure along a North to South cline, suggesting their ancestral population diverged into two subgroups after the initial peopling of the Philippines. Furthermore, they display high percentages of Denisovan gene flow.

Legends, such as those involving the Ten Bornean Datus and the Binirayan Festival, tell tales about how, at the beginning of the 12th century when Indonesia and the Philippines were under the rule of Indianized native kingdoms, the ancestors of the Bisaya escaped from Borneo and from the persecution of Rajah Makatunaw. Led by Datu Puti and Datu Sumakwel and sailing with boats called balangays, they landed near a river called Suaragan, on the southwest coast of Panay, (the place then known as Aninipay), and bartered the land from an Ati headman named Polpolan and his son Marikudo for the price of a necklace and one golden salakot. The hills were left to the Atis while the plains and rivers to the Malays. This meeting is commemorated through the Ati-atihan festival. This legend, though, is challenged by some historians.

During Spanish colonization, the tribe made contact with the conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and were exploited in his colonization of Panay.^{[citation needed]} A 1905 report documented a significant population on Boracay island and the western part of Panay island.

On Nov. 10, 1978, six years after the declaration of Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos, 65 Philippine islands including Boracay was declared "tourist zones and marine reserves" without any mention of the status of the Ati who were the original residents of the island. This de facto dispossession of Ati lands on Boracay by Marcos placed the islands under the control of the Philippine Tourism Authority, and marked the beginning of rapid development on the island, which resulted in the further marginalization of the Boracay Ati for decades.

The Ati speak a distinct language known as Inati. According to a census in 1980, speakers of Inati number about 1,500. Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a are also commonly used.

The Ati practice a form of animism that involves good and evil spirits. These spirits are nature spirits that often guard rivers, the sea, the sky, as well as the mountains. Sometimes, they may cause disease or comfort. The Ati from Negros refer to them as taglugar or tagapuyo, which literally means "inhabiting a place." Christianity has also been adopted due to less isolation and more contact with "outsiders."

The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) granted the Ati community on Boracay a certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT) in 2010.