The Batak live in the forests of northern Palawan in the western Philippines. They depend on a varied mix of cultivation, hunting, gathering and fishing.

The Batak of the Philippines are a ‘negrito’ people, not to be confused with the Batek, a hunter-gatherer people of peninsular Malaysia, or the populous and ethnically diverse Indonesian Batak of northern Sumatra.

They are believed to have originated from the first wave of human populations who crossed the land bridges connecting the Philippine islands with mainland Asia, up to 50,000 years ago.