Land Rights of Veddas

by Jayantha Perera

The chief of Wannila eththo (Veddas or forest dwellers) and the Center for Environmental Justice filed a petition recently in the Appeal Court of Sri Lanka against the clearing of 500 hectares of land in Pollebedda-Rambakan Oya area, a well known ancestral domain of Veddas. The petition stated that the Mahaweli Development Authority had begun an agricultural and livestock project on the land to cultivate maize without conducting an environmental impact assessment. The chief claimed that the land is a part of the ancestral domain of Veddas, and such land clearings would cause their eviction from ancestral land, harm their culture, and usurp their rights over natural resources in the territory. This paper examines their ancestral land rights in the context of international law.

Who are Veddas?

Veddas are indigenous peoples, and international law recognizes their existence and rights. They are distinct social and cultural groups who share collective ancestral claims to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy, or from which they have been displaced. The land and natural resources on which they depend are inextricably linked to their identity, culture, livelihoods, and spiritual well-being. They maintain a language distinct from the official languages.

Veddas live in monsoon dry forests in eastern parts of Sri Lanka. At present, their population is less than 5,000 persons. They consider themselves as Adivasis (original inhabitants) of Sri Lanka. They are forest dwellers who hunt and gather for subsistence. Some are engaged in chena (slash-and-burn) cultivation under rain-fed conditions. Development programs during the past half a century have taken their land, deprived them of their use of natural resources, and limited their access to wildlife sanctuaries that were previously their ancestral land.

Ancestral lands of Veddas have three temporal spaces. The first is the active link with their past traditional domain, which goes back to the pre-colonial time and beyond. The second is the current ancestral domain that overlaps with their past ancestral land or, at least, with a part of it. The third is the traditional domain that they aspire to transmit to their future generations. The social and cultural attachments of an indigenous group to a particular territory are the crucial elements of its indigeneity. International law and international human rights law consider attachment to their ancestral land a fundamental right of indigenous peoples.

Veddas and International Law

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007 provides the contours of indigenous peoples’ rights framework. Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Declaration. It highlights indigenous peoples’ relationship to their lands, territories, and natural resources as the core of their identity, well-being, and culture. Preservation of the environment, transmitted through traditional knowledge, passes down through generations, is also at the center of their existence.

Article 26 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples specifies that:

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories, and resources they have traditionally owned, occupied, or otherwise used or acquired.

2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories, and resources that they possess because of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use and those they have otherwise acquired.

3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories, and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due to the indigenous people’s customs, traditions, and land tenure systems.

The Declaration provides a broad legal framework to protect and sustain indigenous communities. At the country-level, such protection and sustenance require a regulatory framework. Sri Lanka still does not have such a framework. As a result, state departments and agencies continue to acquire ancestral land of Veddas for development programmes. In such endevours, departments and agencies do not acknowledge their cultural, spiritual, economic, and social attachments to their ancestral land or obtain their consent. Such actions have deprived them of hunting grounds and ‘criminalized’ their livelihoods, and discourage the continuity of their cultural and spiritual systems.

Veddas and the State

The state has usurped several Vedda settlements where they have lived for hundreds of years in harmony with nature. Their hunting and agricultural practices have enabled them to secure basic food security. Occasionally they bartered honey, dried meat, and vegetables with nearby Sinhala and Tamil settlements. Such transactions are not commercial but for survival.

The takeover of Veddas’ ancestral land for development purposes during the past half-century has forced them to resettle at government-sponsored relocation sites out of their territories. As a result, most of them who moved to new relocation sites are socially isolated and economically and politically marginalized. Development projects and urbanization undermine their culture, livelihood systems, and social organization. I remember visiting the Henanigala Vedda resettlement site in the early 1980s. Children were malnourished; adults were depressed and purposeless. They used toilet slabs distributed by Mahaweli to make enclosures for animals.

During the past half-century, Veddas have been losing their distinct cultural identity and lifestyle. Direct outside impacts transform their lifestyle, diminishing the scope of their culture and rituals. Resettlement efforts have changed Veddas’ lifestyle and gradually merged them with Sinhalese and Tamil communities, which hold cultural dominance. Such changes have compelled Veddas to adopt a new world view, religious beliefs, and to give up their unique traditional lifestyle. Their language and matrilineal inheritance patterns, for example, have been diminishing as a result.

The Mahaweli agencies have not consulted Veddas regarding development projects. I was a resident anthropologist in the Mahaweli H region in the 1970s where I met many of them. They were worried about how fast they were losing their land, identity, and culture. In the late 1980s, I was in System B of the Mahaweli as a irrigation water management specialist. The Vedda community complained that the state had established large wildlife parks such as Madura Oya Sanctuary and relocation sites without consulting them or engaging them in decision-making. International law prescribes that the state or project owners should obtain their ‘free, prior, informed consent. But no such consent-seeking exercises have ever been conducted among Veddas.

Social development indicators show that Veddas are poor performers on critical indicators. For example, in 2017, one-fifth of Vedda’s children did not attend school. 60% of Vedda girls and 15% of the boys were married before they reached 18. The reason for such poor performance was not Vedda culture or their ‘laziness’ or low-level morality, but the failure of the state to protect them and support their interests.

A Way Forward

A fundamental human right is that the state respects property and land rights. Another is the right to non-discrimination. These two guarantees that indigenous rights are recognized as established through historical use. The starting point for any meaningful dialogue between the state and Veddas is that the state must not limit indigenous communities’ property rights. For example, resource extraction or land acquisition or transfer should not lead to mass-scale usurpation of their ancestral lands.

The Government has to establish an independent authority in consultation with and participation of the Vedda community to guide and co-ordinate laws and policies to safeguard the interests.

The Government should have a legal framework to accommodate the Declaration of Indigenous Peoples Rights in local legal framework. ‘The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006’ in India provides a good example. The Government should also amend Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance, Forest Ordinance, Mahaweli Development Act, Land Acquisition Act, and National Heritage and Wilderness Areas Act to fit into the new legal framework. Such laws should also recognize Veddas’ cultural rights and ensure due recognition and protection of and access to their traditional forest habitats.

(The writer who describes himself as a ‘Safeguard Policy Specialist’ worked worked on indigenous peoples’ issues for over 20 years in Asia. A social anthropologist he did doctoral fieldwork in the Mahaweli in the late 1970s and worked as a water user organization specialist in System B in the late 1980s.)