Legal Personhood and Rights of Nature: Bridging Relational Vedda Worldviews and Sri Lankan Law

Abstract

Sri Lanka’s Indigenous Vedda community, also known as Vanniyalaththo, has profound relationships with nature that are not recognized by the country’s colonial history and, subsequently, its Western-influenced legal framework. This article explores how the gap between relational Vedda laws and state-based law in Sri Lanka can be bridged. It suggests that the emerging paradigms of legal personhood and Rights of Nature, which acknowledge the more-than-instrumental values of nature, can serve as a starting point for bridging this gap. By exploring the relational ontologies of Vedda law, this article advocates broader recognition of Vedda worldviews within the existing state-based law in Sri Lanka and highlights the role of Indigenous communities as non-state actors in shaping more-than-human governance.