• Decades-old grievances remain unresolved despite repeated promises
• Veddahs say traditional rights remain restricted by existing laws
• Climate change adds pressure to already threatened livelihoods
• New gazette grants access to forests for traditional practices
• Wider legal framework for indigenous rights under preparation

“We are not a group living in happiness.”

That was how Veddah Leader Uruwarige Wannila Aththo summed up his community’s situation, addressing the gathering to mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples at the Indigenous Peoples’ Heritage Museum in Dambana on 9 August.

Reflecting on 28 years of leadership, Wannila Aththo said the day had been used to bring together representatives from villages including Rathugala, Henanigala, and Dalukana to discuss shared grievances, with a Variga Sabha – a clan council – held the night before to draft a memorandum, or sandeshaya, for the President and ministers.

Some issues, he acknowledged, had seen progress over the decades. But many fundamental problems, he said, remained unresolved even after 27 years.

Established by the UN General Assembly in December 1994, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is observed annually on 9 August, marking the anniversary of the first meeting of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva in 1982. 

It is intended to protect the rights, land, and heritage of an estimated 476 million indigenous people across more than 90 countries – under 6% of the global population, yet holding land rights over roughly a quarter of the earth’s surface, land containing an estimated 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. 

The UN theme for 2026, ‘Honouring Indigenous Midwives: Safeguarding Life and Well-being,’ centres traditional knowledge holders’ role in maternal health and community resilience.

In Sri Lanka, the day fell this year on the same weekend the Environment Ministry signed a new gazette governing indigenous access to protected forest.

Speaking at the event held under the patronage of Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, Wannila Aththo drew a sharp contrast between the present and the freedom of earlier generations, who lived off the forest without legal restriction.

“For a community to survive, its rights and traditions must be protected,” he said. Yet today, he added, many of the community’s traditional practices were prohibited by law. 

He pointed specifically to fishing and the gathering of forest produce. He noted that theoretical permissions existed for traditional fishing in identified tanks, but the arrangements were often confusing in practice: large reservoirs such as Maduru Oya and Ulhitiya are not the community’s traditional tanks, making it impossible to exercise the rights on paper. Gathering yams, fruits, and other forest resources, he said, remained legally restricted – a threat he framed as having a direct bearing on cultural identity.

He was equally direct about the legal weight of past promises. Agreements signed with previous governments, he said, had no legal validity when challenged in court, leaving the community exposed whenever traditional fishing or forest gathering ended up before a judge. 

He also criticised the Government’s habit of sending officials without decision-making authority to meetings with the community and said he was disappointed that the Ministers of Cultural Affairs and Environment – the officials he considered most relevant to the community’s situation – were absent from the national event. His people, he said, needed the permission and freedom to continue their way of life, so that future generations would know their lineage had existed at all.

Addressing the event, Prime Minister Amarasuriya announced that the long-standing draft bill on indigenous rights has been submitted to Cabinet, framing it alongside the newly-signed gazette as part of the Government’s commitment to protecting the community’s land rights, livelihoods, and cultural autonomy.

She held up Veddah environmental practices – avoiding the killing of pregnant animals, not destroying entire beehives when collecting honey, returning regenerative parts of yams to the soil – as principles worth learning from, and invoked former Chieftain Uruwarige Tissahamy’s refusal of an official residence and land from a Head of State as an example of the community’s values.

People older than the island’s written history

Long before the first lines of the ‘Mahavamsa’ were etched onto palm leaves, the ancestors of Sri Lanka’s Veddah community were already the undisputed custodians of the island’s dry zone forests.

Anthropological and archaeological excavations across cave sites such as Batadombalena and Fa Hien Lena have established an unbroken human presence in Sri Lanka stretching back over 38,000 years and biological studies by scholars, including Dr. Siran Deraniyagala and Prof. Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, confirm that the Veddah people – or forest dwellers – are the direct living descendants of Balangoda Man (Homo sapiens balangodensis). They are, in the most literal scientific sense, a people older than the island’s written history.

The ‘Mahavamsa’ traces their lineage to Kuveni, a native Yakkha princess, and Prince Vijaya, legendary progenitor of the Sinhalese people, whose offspring are said to have retreated into the central forests to form the Wannila Aththo lineage as it is known today.

Traditionally hunter-gatherers, the community relied on bows and small axes (keteriya), sheltered in caves or bark-and-thatch huts, and lived by foraging, small-game hunting, and honey harvesting – broadly divided into Gal Veddahs (cave-dwelling), Muhudu Veddahs (coastal), and Gam Veddahs (village, practising chena cultivation). 

Their language is distinct from both Sinhala and Tamil, and their spiritual worldview centres on ancestor veneration – the belief that deceased relatives become guardian spirits, or Nae Yaku, invoked during rituals such as the Kiri Koraha dance. The clan is led by a supreme chieftain; Wannila Aththo succeeded his father, the late Chieftain Uruwarige Tissahamy, in 1998, and remains based in Dambana as chief custodian of the community’s heritage, language, and legal rights.

Decades of agricultural expansion, State-led development, and the establishment of strict wildlife reserves – including Maduru Oya National Park – gradually severed the community from these ancestral domains. Classified as trespassers under standard forest protection statutes, generations faced prosecution for traditional yam collection, foraging, and ceremonial honey harvesting, compounded by a lack of civil documentation.

Rights often ignored or stripped away

“Globally, indigenous people protect 90–95% of the world’s biodiversity, yet in Sri Lanka their rights are often ignored or stripped away,” said Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ) Chairman Hemantha Withanage. The CEJ has been a longtime ally of indigenous communities in translating grievances into legal and environmental protections.

He noted that countries such as India and Indonesia had established legal frameworks specifically to safeguard indigenous rights, while Sri Lanka’s communities had seen their rights further eroded since the Mahaweli project.

Prior to the main event on 9 August, that erosion, and the State’s uneven response to it, was the subject of a separate dialogue in Kotabakiniya, Dambana involving community representatives from Vakarai, Rathugala, and Pollebedda, alongside the CEJ.

Withanage pointed to one legal victory in Pollebedda: after the community and the CEJ filed a lawsuit against unauthorised maize cultivation within the forest, the Mahaweli Authority formally undertook before the court not to seize the community’s ancestral lands for agriculture. He said CEJ lawyers had also spent days in indigenous territories monitoring whether Police or wildlife officials were unfairly arresting community members over traditional fishing. 

Beyond land rights, he pointed to climate change compounding the community’s difficulties – worsening water scarcity, more frequent forest fires, and the disappearance of honeybees. To counter the fading of Veddah culture, he said, the CEJ had documented the language in books, produced films and dramas on traditional rituals, and continued to advocate for the proposed indigenous rights bill in Parliament.

The representatives at the dialogue described the human cost of the current framework in blunt terms. In one instance, nearly 20 people were fined approximately Rs. 300,000 for traditional fishing, forcing families to sell ancestral fields to pay the court.

“This generation is not just fighting for themselves, but for the generations yet to be born in this country,” one Veddah leader said, adding that legal recognition of the community’s identity documents remained pending even as a new bill was being discussed in Parliament.

In Vakarai, representatives said forest clearing for development had pushed elephants into village settlements, making traditional cultivation increasingly difficult, while boundary stones were being placed on lands cultivated by indigenous families for generations, without consultation. In Dalukana, representatives said growing tourism, while economically beneficial nationally, had inadvertently restricted access to sacred sites used for rituals and annual festival bathing.

“We are not against development,” one representative said, “but it should not come at the cost of our spiritual and physical access to the land.”

New gazette notification

Two days before the national event, on 7 August, Environment Minister Dr. Dammika Patabendi signed a new set of regulations at a committee office in Parliament, in the presence of Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody; Minister of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs Hiniduma Sunil Senevi; Environment Ministry Secretary K.R. Uduwawala, Department of Wildlife Conservation Additional Director General – Operations Manjula Amararathna, and Additional Secretary to the President Buwaneka Herath.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Patabendi clarified: “Our ministry did not submit a bill; instead, we have issued a formal gazette notification.”

Issued under Section 71, read with Section 3(3)(b), of the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance (Chapter 469), the Minister said the regulations were meant to govern traditional indigenous activities within national parks and protected areas while preserving the ordinance’s environmental safeguards. He added that the document had been signed on 7 August and was moving to the printing stage.

“This gazette grants the necessary permissions for indigenous communities to carry out their traditional activities within national parks,” he said, adding that this included allowing them to use resources for their traditional medicinal practices and other customary activities which had been previously restricted.

The regulations apply to designated impact zones: for Maduru Oya National Park, the Dambana Grama Niladhari Division (A7) in the Mahiyanganaya Divisional Secretariat and the Paranagama Grama Niladhari Division (142A) in the Dehiattakandiya Divisional Secretariat; for Gal Oya National Park, the Galgamuwa Grama Niladhari Division (104A) in the Madulla Divisional Secretariat.

Community members aged 18 and above residing within these zones will be eligible to register, based on identification or other verifiable documentation, with applications carrying the recommendation of the relevant indigenous community leader – or the designated leader for the Eastern, Northern, and Uva Provinces – forwarded through the grama niladhari and divisional secretary to the Director General of Wildlife Conservation.

Registered members will be issued a photographic identity card, required whenever entering a protected area, and must use designated entry and exit points; wildlife officers will maintain a register of entries and exits. All activities must be carried out using traditional methods only – modern or commercial equipment is prohibited – and materials collected may be used solely for personal subsistence, not commercial purposes, with additional guidelines governing plant material collection.

The regulations followed a parliamentary committee meeting on the proposed bill on indigenous rights held on 22 January 2025, during which extensive attention was given to the legal difficulties indigenous communities face when entering forest reserves. They are expected, in particular, to allow communities around Maduru Oya and Gal Oya to continue daily practices with fewer legal obstacles.

Bill likely to take a few more months

Despite Prime Minister Amarasuriya’s claim that a draft bill had been submitted to Cabinet, Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs Secretary W.P. Senadheera told The Sunday Morning that the bill was still being drafted, with the gazette intended to address immediate concerns in the interim.

“We are currently drafting the bill. It will likely take a few more months to finalise, as we need to gather various ideas and opinions for it,” he said.

He added that urgent needs – such as entering forests and gathering honey – had prompted the interim gazette signed by the Minister of Environment to grant them those rights and permissions. The Cultural Affairs Ministry, he confirmed, was leading the drafting of the wider legislative framework.

However, Wannila Aththo’s assessment of this process was less generous. In relation to the gazette and the proposed legislation, he said the community had not been consulted on its contents and that he feared an arbitrary process would do more harm than good.

“We want to know what is contained in the proposed indigenous peoples bill. It is deeply disappointing that we, the indigenous people who will be directly affected by this legislation, have not been given an opportunity to see or discuss its contents. Before drafting such a law, the Government should have consulted indigenous communities and sought our views. As the leader of my community, I am deeply dissatisfied that this was not done,” he said.

Explaining previous attempts at legislation, Wannila Aththo said that during former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration, he went to Parliament and held discussions with several institutions such as the Mahaweli Authority, Cultural Affairs Ministry, Environment Ministry, Wildlife and Forest Conservation Departments, and Coast Conservation Department, as well as the Attorney General’s Department, in an effort to resolve the issues faced by indigenous people. However, the Government changed while efforts were being made to amend those laws.

“We accept that existing laws and regulations must change to meet the needs of the country and its people,” Wannila Aththo said. “But when laws are made, they must take into account the different communities, traditions, and cultures that exist in this country.”