Recommendations on safeguarding the rights, dignity and future of Aadi Vaasi communities

• We have hauled them too, the world’s precious humans that we call tribal or indigenous or aborigines into the hell that we have created for ourselves. They too now are living like us; with cancer, kidney diseases, diabetes and every kind of health-based complication. 
• Yet it is these people that could save us – even at this late stage – when a vast amount of indigenous fauna and flora has been ridden extinct, poisoned by our sciences – the pesticide – the weedicide, the plastic and the non-bio-degradable luxuries that we undergo drudgery to earn and obtain

 

The need to ensure that the forest rights, dignity and knowledge of the Aadi Vaasi indigenous people of Sri Lanka are imparted to their children

By Surya Vishwa 

Today we endeavour on a pilgrimage of sorts into the blasphemy we have made of our lives and its entwining with this earth, our home. The Harmony page has on several occasions researched on the plight of that which we know as indigenous, whether it is knowledge systems, arts, medicine or people. It is obvious that it is people who are carriers of knowledge. Ancient knowledge is lost when we do not attempt to safeguard, respect and help the people who hold this knowledge, safeguarded through ancestries, to share it with the present and the future. It is only then that the evolution of what is modern will have meaning as it would not be created by ridiculing and murdering what is humanity’s shared heritage with the universe. 

The word indigenous means to originate – and evolve naturally – i.e. with the local biodiversity and the natural landscape of this planet. 

Modern man takes great pride in his technological world and within parameters yes, it is good that he does, because even this piece of writing has been written on a technological device and the wide global transmission thereon facilitated through modern technology. The vicissitudes of our current technological world of ultra-development extend into every sphere of life. But this has been a journey that has evolved across thousands of years where in each era a particular science reigned supreme. For example the science of building pyramids and those connected with hydraulic expertise as Sri Lanka was known for. 

To give due respect then to the abilities of humans perfected in one realm that we call technology (which has a consort which is modern science that the Western world has taken the total credit for), would mean that we also give due acknowledgement, to the root of all knowledge. The earth and the people who were closest to it. 

We can ask ourselves, how did we get to this extremely advanced state – where were we rocked to sleep first, what were the ancient lullabies that were sung to us with the gentle rhythm of the wind, how did nature impart its knowledge on what heals and kills, how did the ancient ancestors of ours enjoy lives devoid of the kind of sicknesses that we have rampaging in today’s world. How did they experience an interconnected wisdom with nature that weaved into every branch of knowledge including those which we hail in the modern world as education system, construction, agriculture, astronomy, physics, medical sciences and water conservation? 

Contemporary anthropologists such as Jeremy Narby have researched extensively how those who connected deeper beyond the known layers of perceived knowledge, whether it be aborigines or the ancient Egyptians have known for millennia about things such as the double helix structure discovered by conventional science only in 1953.

Gaps that exist in our arrogance

Therefore we can pause and reflect on the gaps that exist in our arrogance where we consider that only one particular science is superior to all others. If we ponder very deeply we will find that it is this arrogance which is the ruin of this world and responsible for the fragmented nature of modernity and the so-called civilised reality of ours. When we do this we can see that it as it is – replete with discontent, overwork, rote-education, rote employment, stress, illnesses of every conceivable sort. We have progressed to the macabre extent that we are using our technology advancement to create illnesses in science labs (bio-weaponry). 

We can now compare and contrast those that we call indigenous to ourselves. As a prerequisite to this we should ask, first and foremost why all of us are not ‘indigenous’? Isn’t each of us, wherever we may live upon this planet, children of the earth who come upon it with the salient duty to protect and safeguard it and in doing so unfold library upon library loads of unadulterated information that every layer of the cosmos has to offer us? 

Is not one of our salient duties to keep this planet in its pristine form until such time that each of us return to it as our final resting place? Despite our boasting of superior knowledge and our labelling of that which is ancient as primitive, why is it that we have failed in the simple most task of keeping the earth unpolluted which no other creature of earth has an issue with? 

Just one cursory glance at what we have done to this earth with our arrogant display of ‘advancement’ will tell us that the end of times is at hand. There are studies that were done around a decade ago that warned us that this earth has resources only for less than five decades more. Read the recent most scientific journals and you will find this fact highlighted. And the clock is ticking. Yet we are busy with our petty wars, our global politicking and above all seeing to it that every iota of environment and human protecting common sense held by indigenous communities is wiped out. 

We have hauled them too, the world’s precious humans that we call tribal or indigenous or aborigines into the hell that we have created for ourselves. They too now are living like us; with cancer, kidney diseases, diabetes and every kind of health-based complication. 

Yet it is these people that could save us – even at this late stage – when a vast amount of indigenous fauna and flora has been ridden extinct, poisoned by our sciences – the pesticide – the weedicide, the plastic and the non-bio-degradable luxuries that we undergo drudgery to earn and obtain. 

We may live today in brick-made prisons that we struggle daily to pay back bank loans for, but in the depths of our psyche the gnarled root of ancient memory shows us the free shelter we once enjoyed and the abundance that we repasted on. The killing we carried out, as necessitated, was to survive. The killing of another being, whether a tribal war or a creature of the wild for consumption was well within the edicts of honour that we do not find today, whether in our current warfare on our plates.

Within the ethics followed by ancient man no animals who were cared for like children, made to live in structures alongside humans were then injected hormones to put on flesh just so that these artificial lives could be ended for us to consume. When the Lankan modern policy makers attempted to ‘develop’ the indigenous people and while introducing modern scientific agriculture to them, also tried to introduce poultry farming the indigenous leadership had vehemently protested, stating that they could not kill any earth being that they cohabit space with as they do with their children, feed, watch grow daily and wake up each morning to. They had also educated the personages who tried to change them into butchers that their hunting in the forest was of a completely different ethos where a strict set of rules govern their quest for food when concerning living beings. 

 Who is the ‘civilised’ amongst us?

This makes us wonder as to who is the ‘civilised’ amongst us. And yes, we are sick industrialised beings whose insensitivity is boiled and served for over-consumption every day. 

The sickest part of this abomination is that we have succeeded with coercive mastery in making those that still desperately try to cling to a different, natural, pure way of life, ape us and our funereal ‘development.’

We speak today of climate change. If there is one set of people who could help us heal the earth that we have made poisonous, erratic and bitter, it is those who are indigenous – the aborigines of this world. 

A fortnight ago we featured the plight of Sri Lanka’s first inhabitants, the Aadi Vaasis – the ancient Veddha community from Henanigala – a general wilderness locale that was converted into an agrarian habitant in the 1980s as part of the Mahaweli development scheme and where nearly one hundred Aadi Vaasi families mainly from Dambana origin settled. Below is their story that modernity is oblivion to. 

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/Narratives-from-Henanigala/10523-772197

This page has written on the Aadi Vaasis in this page several times and we place these below as well, alongside the research based writings on the Kogi earth protectors of the high Columbian mountains. 

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/The-forest-the-oldest-university-of-the-world/10523-760361

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/Relevance-of-Adi-Vasis-to-our-modern-times/10523-759830

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/A-glimpse-into-the-message-of-the-Kogi-indigenous-tribe-protectors-of-the-Great-Mother-the-Earth/10523-700595

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/Reconciling-to-what-we-have-done-to-earth-humanity-and-our-Adi-Vasis/10523-748788

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/Following-the-Kogi-footsteps-to-be-protectors-of-this-earth/10523-700891

When we published the narratives from Henanigala we announced an initiative that we are undertaking to preserve the Sri Lankan Aborigine Veddha language. The Harmony page media research initiative on conserving the Aadi Vaasi language of the Veddha lineage of Sri Lanka will be followed up on in the weeks to come and published in this page. 

Alongside the Henanigala narratives we also announced that we will provide a set of recommendations that policy makers could use. 

We herewith place a segment of such recommendations.

Recommendations policymakers could use

For all children in mainstream Sri Lankan schools to have a subject introduced from primary education onwards and right through secondary, on the Aborigine people of the world, segmenting out the diverse knowledge they hold with practice based field visits that will link children with the forests and soil. This is to be linked with climate change sensitiveness, environment protection and sustainability which is one of the biggest issues we are plagued with. 

Today the forests are out of bound for the people who lived in it and safeguarded it for centuries. We have justified this stance as ‘protecting’ the forests, (while deforestation by all other powers that be manage to wriggle through these laws). It is thereby the very last chance that we have to design laws that let the younger generations of the Indigenous people authentically reclaim the soul of the forests, merge with it and work with their dying out ancestors to glean out the knowledge of their home. This includes that which is medicinal which made these humans who lived with mother earth as resilient as her. 

To include global Indigenous knowledge practice and assimilation into national policies (as way of exchange and learning) in a manner that is integrated with diplomacy. 

As above, for every foreign mission of Sri Lanka to have an official whose task would be to gather information on indigenous communities of that particular country. These officials could then work on how Sri Lanka could learn from diverse positive actions being taken the world over to integrate and promote aboriginal knowledge into the modern world. Amongst pessimism there is also optimism. There are countries who have integrated indigenous heritage into national identity and who recognise the worth of promoting and using ancient expertise as a panacea for modern ills.

For Sri Lanka to set about creating a Ministry of Indigenous People and Knowledge with appointments being made from the Veddha community itself. Thereby for Sri Lanka to function closely with its foreign missions abroad in promoting the authentic lifestyle regaining of the local indigenous people and work on strategising a tourism model that will bring the world’s forest loving people to travel to this island and meet the people of the forest here.

For the children and the grandchildren of the Aadi Vaasi communities who are now in schools to be engaged in strategic activities that will immerse their inner consciousness with pride (as opposed to the current subtle shame ingrained through modern schooling – i.e. learning that their knowledge is inferior to the scholarship they learn at school).

A holistic integral framework should be designed by a panel consisting of those rooted in authentic love for the earth and forests. It is imperative that such a panel should be selected directly from Aadi Vaasi lineage and others who work for the safekeeping of mother earth. If such a person is linked with academia that should be a secondary matter. The fault of the modern world and its education system is that it does not operate from the heart.

This panel could design a series of engagements for the children of the lineage of the Aadi Vaasis, including through aesthetics, aimed directly at practice in safeguarding and protecting forests and the restorative nurturing of dignity and respect for their heritage. 

An encyclopaedia of indigenous knowledge of the Aadi Vaasis of Sri Lanka could be undertaken as a collaborative exercise with the Ministry of education of Sri Lanka as well as the Ministry of Culture. 

As above it is recommended that considerable time is spent by the children and the Aadi Vaasi leaders and elders to recollect the body of forestry plant knowledge. This could be used to treat the over pesticide used soil in a systematic way in the agrarian areas such as Henanigala. Just as plants nourish the human body they nourish the soil. When we poison the soil as a route to obtaining food we too are poisoned. 

Sri Lanka has almost lost the expansive expertise of aborigine forest medicine which is somewhat different from the traditional medicine such as Sinhala Wedakama and Ayurveda. To date Sri Lanka has not worked on conserving this treasure house of knowledge which has largely died out with the Veddha elders. The one remote chance of resurrecting it would be by working with the current elders who have this knowledge to teach it through a planned curricula to all children of aboriginal heritage.

For Sri Lanka to organise by 2028 a World Indigenous Knowledge for Sustainability Consciousness conference as part of its global diplomacy program.

As above, for the possible progress on the above recommendations to be presented and policy directives adopted and shared with the world community. 

For Sri Lanka to set up a credible team which includes a majority of members of the Aadi Vaasi clans to genuinely assess the Mahaweli Development Scheme imposed on the Aborigines of Sri Lanka and thereby to work with resurrecting the soil by following the dictates of the earth from a foresting lens. The expertise taught by ecologists such as Ranil Senanayake who introduced the analogue foresting method to the world could be used.

https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/Pandemics-vs-forests-food-and-immunity/10523-711692

https://www.ft.lk/Opinion-and-Issues/A-journey-to-keep-the-land-forested/14-661038

To form a commission that will work with the elders of the Aadi Vaasi clans of Sri Lanka in all policy making that includes their wellbeing as well as overall national concerns involving sustainability and environment protection.

 

Having noted that the current tourism that occurs with the Dambana Aadi Vaasi community is more of a showpiece kind, it is recommended that the current museum that is being developed in Dambana, be shaped into a ‘living knowledge centre’ that will ensure that all that was and is held dear by the Veddha community of Sri Lanka be re-enlivened into practice and not just be relegated to a museum. Museums are establishments housing relics of that is now dead to this world. The Aadi Vaasi community are alive and their way of life should be restored as a route to restoring humanity. 

As above it is recommended that a far thinking tourism model that will awaken the inner soul of humans and their inherent bond with nature be introduced. This page will ideate on this specifically in the weeks to come based on our field work.

It is recommended that the Presidential Secretariat form a panel directly under the incumbent President for the welfare of the indigenous people to restore to them the rights to the forests that they inherited as their birthright and to create agrarian models such as Analogue foresting. Such a restoring could reverse the blights such as ‘modern’ sicknesses and alcoholism that plague aborigines across the world – arising out of hopelessness and despair – so that this may not be the heritage of the future. 

As above it is up to the leader of the nation to ensure that the leaders of the Aadi Vaasi Communities are listened to when making policies pertaining to them and with the historic change Sri Lanka witnessed last September it is recommended that tangible results are seen as relevant to the first people of Sri Lanka. 

Note: The writings pertaining to the Aborigine community of Sri Lanka was produced in the backdrop of research for a documentary series produced by German national, Annette Muller on world indigenous people. One aspect of focus being the ancient people of Sri Lanka, the Aadi Vaasis, also called the Veddha community, the documentary is filmed globally by Tilo Wondollek, facilitated by San Esprit in Germany and Italy. The Harmony page is a collaborating mass media research partner in this endeavour. The commentaries in this article reflect solely the views of the writer.