Preserving the rights of indigenous people

You must have often heard the term indigenous people being used by adults and wondered whether they were referring to a particular race that belongs to some nation. The answer is No. Indigenous people are found in various parts of the world. It is estimated that there are more than 370 million indigenous people spread across 70 countries worldwide.

They are found across the world from the Arctic to the South Pacific. According to a common definition, they are the descendants of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived.

The new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.

There are indigenous people in Sri Lanka too and most of you must have visited the aadivasi people or the Vanniyela aththo as they are now popularly called even though many still refer to them as the Veddhas in Mahiyangana .

Just like all the other indigenous people of the world, the indigenous people of our country too have many social and cultural issues that need to be looked into in order to ensure their continuity in the modern world.

Even though it is sometimes argued that it is important for the human species as a whole to preserve a wide range of cultural diversity as far as possible, and that the protection of indigenous cultures is vital to this enterprise the world's indigenous people are struggling for their survival and in some instances are virtually a forgotten tribe.

Today they are confronted with a diverse range of concerns connected with their status and interaction with other cultural groups, as well as changes in their inhabited environment.

Some challenges are specific to particular groups while others are commonly experienced.

Their human rights continue to be abused in several countries . Some of the major issues confronting them today include cultural and linguistic preservation, land rights, ownership and exploitation of natural resources, political determination and autonomy, environmental degradation and incursion, poverty, health and discrimination.

Last week, August 9, was a day of great significance to the indigenous people around the globe because it was the International Day of the World's Indigenous People. It was the date o f the first meeting in 1982 of the United Nations Working Group of Indigenous Populations of the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the Commission on Human Rights.

The UN General Assembly decided on December 23 1994 that the International Day of the World's Indigenous People should be observed on August 9 every year during the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (resolution 49/214).

Thereafter, on December 20 ,2004, the General Assembly decided to continue observing the International Day of Indigenous People every year during the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (2005-2014).

What is your view of the need to preserve and protect the rights of the indigenous people of the world, especially those living in our own country? Learn as much as you can about the diverse issues they face due to modernisation and colonisation.

See how best we can help them to intergrate with the rest of the modern world while preserving their own identity as a unique people. There is so much that they too can contribute to enrich our heritage so let their voices too be heard and not be lost in the wildnerness.

As we have explained there are a number of indigenous people around the world and here are some of the well known and not so popular tribes. The Bahnar (also spelled Ba Na) an ethnic group of Vietnam living primarily in the Central Highland provinces of Gia Lai and Kon Tum, as well as the coastal provinces of Bình Djnh and Phú Yên. They speak a language in the Mon-Khmer language family. The Batak are one of about 70 indigenous peoples of the Philippines.

They are located in the northeastern portions of Palawan, a relatively large island in the southwest of the archipelago, the indigenous peoples of the Americas (for example, the Lakota in the USA, the Mayas in Guatemala or the Aymaras in Bolivia), the Inuit and Aleutians of the circumpolar region, the Saami of northern Europe, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia and the Maori of New Zealand. These and most other indigenous peoples have retained distinct characteristics which are clearly different from those of other segments of the national populations.

Practising unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.