The Plight of the Veddahs

This blog seems to be developing a loyal readership in the Subcontinent. With over a billion people, many fluent in English, I suppose this is not surprising.

888—no relation, I trust, to 666—sent this along in response to my piece on the UN draft declaration on the rights of indigenous people:

888:
Sri Lankan hunters are not nearing extinction. They have been assimilating with the Sinhalese for over a millennium now. That means they are not discriminated against, there is no racial discrimination and no reserves. It’s a genuine case of racial mixing and not the 'victor' - 'conquered' relationship.Birth rate only means their numbers might be growing in Canada, but there are other issues too. Canada may not be cited for falling population like in other countries, but aren't the natives financially backward? Don't they fill up your jails? Ok forget it, just think how the world that you take for granted as you made it is alien to them on their own land. A little compassion is good for a religious man.


SR:
888, I agree with you in principle. There is nothing wrong with assimilation, and “indigenous” citizens should be treated like everybody else. This is equality. It is hard for those of us who remember the struggles against segregation, apartheid, and the ghetto to accept that a demand for segregation, apartheid, and ghettos is somehow a call for “equality.” That, indeed, was the point of my article.

But your views, and the policies of Sri Lanka, are in gross violation of the new UN treaty, given only that the Sri Lankan indigenous people, the Veddahs, be recognized by the UN. According to the UN, such assimilation is “cultural genocide” (Article 7).

Canada proposed to do just this back in the 1960’s, following the model of blacks in the US South. The native population strongly rebuffed this. Canada is now paying “reparations” for what tentative steps they took in that direction.

The UN declaration insists that indigenous people must have reservations: see articles 25 to 30, inclusive. Sri Lankan Veddahs do not. They must also be protected from encroachment on their traditional means of livelihood, something Sri Lanka does not do for its Veddahs. Instead, they are commonly arrested for hunting in the national parks. This is especially unfortunate for them since the national parks have been formed from their traditional hunting grounds.

Veddah representatives are given no formal voice in decision making in Sri Lanka—this again is in violation of the UN declaration.

Worse, the Sri Lankan government has actually refused passports to Veddah representatives seeking to attend international conferences, on the grounds that they are “not real Sri Lankans.” So assimilation is not, in fact, the Sri Lankan model. Indeed, claiming that the experience of the Veddahs has been one of peaceful assimilation rather beggars belief since the process has, as you say, so far taken a millennium. Actually, it has taken more like two, and counting.

It’s all pretty crazy, but craziest of all is that Sri Lanka, and so many other countries, are held to a completely different, and much lower, standard, than Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Aboriginal poverty? The indigenous people of Sri Lanka are the poorest of the poor in that poor country, “economically backward,” according to an ILO study. They have been cut off by government from their traditional means of livelihood, hunting, and have not adapted to farming.

In Canada, the indigenous people are also relatively poor, but unlike in Sri Lanka, they are heavily subsidized by the government. Calculations suggest that each Canadian aboriginal family gets something like $40,000 per year from the government, directly or indirectly. That is more than the average Canadian makes. It far more than the average Sri Lankan Veddah makes. If Canadian aboriginals remain poor, it is apparently not the result of discrimination by government.

You claim that the situation in Sri Lanka is not the “victor-conquered” relationship. We cannot be certain from any surviving written records whether the original inhabitants were physically dispossessed by the Sinhalese when they arrived from North India—we can only speculate. However, there does seem to be a clear record of a great conflict between immigrants from North India and the original inhabitants in the Ramayana. And I think we can deduce something from the fact that the Sinhalese traditionally refer to the aboriginals as “devils,” “demons,” and “serpents.” It sounds as though relations were not always amicable.

The Veddahs are clearly in decline. When the Dutch arrived in Sri Lanka, they recorded Veddah settlements as far north as Jaffna. There are now only a few hundred to a few thousand left, in perhaps five small villages. By contrast, as noted, the indigenous people of Canada are growing both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the general population. And there are far more of them now than there were at first contact.

And we do know from historical records that, by contract to Sri Lanka, in most parts of Canada, the relationship between Europeans and indigenous people has not been that of “victor-conquered.” It has been one of commercial cooperation to mutual benefit. With a few local exceptions, the Europeans did not fight wars with the natives; they were welcomed by the native people, who profited from trading with them. And they bought the land on which they settled.

This was not so, of course, in the US. But the difference is significant.

For more on the Veddahs, the curious can visit

http://vedda.org/index.htm

I don’t mean to pick on Sri Lanka in particular. There are literally thousands of similar indigenous groups all over the world, in similar plights; the Nagas of northeast India have been mentioned recently here. All, though, are being ignored by the UN, in favour of the native people of Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and perhaps Scandinavia, who are not in nearly as bad a situation. Why, other than because of anti-Western prejudice?