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Show Als e The Salt Lake Tribune WORLD Sunday, December 26, 1999 Ancient Culture — It Can Be Bought villages and told to become rice farmers. Successive governments have sopertichally oe Veddhas’right to hunt but haven't restored theirland. ‘With the jungles lost to them, many have become Sri Lanka’s aborigines maintain tribal ways in spite of, because of, tourist interest THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DAMBANA,Sri Lanka — Thetribesman’s wild blackhair andhis wispy beard, specked with red tobacco juice, quivers as he crashes one jagged stone into another. An orange spark shoots up, smokebil- lows for a moment,then flames burstout. thick forests now surrounded by gates and guards, Butin recent years they have been pushed offtheir traditional lands, and the government has tried to “civilize” them. Then tourists began dropping by,of- lated into the general population, and their numbers ning of this century to just a few hundred in this na- certainly have not been ene since the Stone Age. “For somebody else I'd charge 500 rupees. For you,” he says, pausing with the guile of a market haggler, “give me whatever you're happy with.” Here in the aboriginal village of Dambana, 85 have dwindled from several thousand at the begin- Those Veddhas who counton tourist money know well what their customers want to hear: They say rupted andkeptalive by the invaders in tour buses. Anthropologists say the Veddhas trace directly backto the prehistoric island people of 14,000 B.C., or earlier. The Veddhas, who are thoughtto be related to Australian aborigines, reamed freely until the Sth miles east of the capital of Colombo,for a few dollars Veddhas will makefire from stones, dance a tribal jig, shoot a whistling arrow through the underbrush or pose for photosin loincloths, gazing stoically into the forest where they once thrived. It'sa melancholy commercialization of the ancient culture of the Veddhas, the original inhabitants of The Veddhas had no system of land ownership recognized by the invaders. this tropical islandoff India’s southern tip. “Veddhas don't like us coming to this ae ”Ja. yasinghe says. “We shouldn’t bring our families butpeoplelikeit. tion of 18 million people. Their traditions are in a strange spot, at once cor- century B.C., when Buddhists and then Hindus migrated from India. For thousands of years and through wavesof invaders, they maintained their ways, living in the jungle, hunting wild boar, iguana and deer, and worshippingforest gods. friends and family to see the Veddhas in Dambana. His buddies pose for snapshots, grinning for the camera, their arms draped around the aborigines’ shoulders. Veddhas behaved like cavemen. Bit by bit, mostof the Veddhas have been assimi- Uru Warige Hudu Bandiya Atto, one of the last Then,he looks up and says something his people Dulara Jayasinghe has brought a busload of fering rewards for each snap of a Nikon — if the something his people have been doing since the Stone Age — makingfire by bashing rocks together. remaining Veddha aborigines of Sri Lanka, has done farmers and abandoned the old practices tied to the However, the most dramatic changes have come in the past few decades. In the 1950s, the government built a reservoir in the dry central lowlands where most of the Veddhaslived, inundating their hunting land andflooding their caves. Thenit formed a Veddha “welfare” committee that attempted to whittle away the ancienttraditions and get the aborigines intosuits andties. outsiders rarely visit, even as streams of tourists Mike Miller/The Salt Lake Tribune More suchprojects followed, and in 1983 the gov- ernmentdeclared that the Veddhas’last large hunt- walk by. They claim to use bows and arrowsto hunt, even though they have guns. And they say they're little touched by the modern world, despite being wily enough toprofit from it. Uru Warige Kendala Attospits betel nutjuice into ing forest would becomea protected wildlife reserve. a deep bow]andreflects onthe tourist influx, After tens of thousands of years, the Veddhas were “Thelife for our great-grandparents,it was much madepoachers on their own land. “They would go into the forest and get honey and hunt, but it was illegal,” says Suranjan Koddithu- better than now,” he says. “There was no one coming wakku, an environmental activist in the Green Movement of Sri Lanka. “Many times they were takeninto custody.” The Veddhas wereresettled in rehabilitation to visit us and enough animals.” Times are different, but he believes the Veddhas will neverfade completely. “Though the tiger may change his jungle,thetiger is still a tiger,” he says. “There will be at least one Veddha left until the end of the days.” HopesRise for Solution To Quebec Dilemma BY LYLE DENNISTON ‘THE BALTIMORE SUN After a historic — andat times rancorous — week, Canada’s Parliamenthasjust left Ottawa for a seven-week recess. Despite the rancor, the week washistoric because it might have found the way to solve the constitutional puzzle over Quebec. For more than twodecades, the the desire to secede. It is up to the national and provincial governments together to decide what would be a “clear question” and what would be a “clear majority.” After waiting more than a year to see what that might meanif put into effect, Canada found out Dec. 10, when the national government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien madepublic a specific plan. nation’s future has been wrapped up in the hardest question yet to His ministers putit before the House of Commons as GovernmentBill C-20, and floor debate separate nation, andwill it? Commonsprocess, in February, will be to send the measure to a committee for action. arise underits constitution: Can Quebec break away to become a When the Parliament reassem- bles Feb. 7, the lawmakers likely will begin to work seriously to- ward a final answer. The time between now and then, however, won't be idle: Ca- nadians will be facing a campaign-style ad blitz by the op- posing sides in the debate over Quebec secession. The issue is as momentous for Canadians as was the threatened breakup of the United States 139 years ago when South Carolina becamethefirst of the Deep South states to secede. It took the Civil War to save the Union. There is no prospect ofcivil war in Canada over Quebec, and Canada hopes it has found an answerthat would keep the French- speaking province in the confederation. If so, it would be partly becausethe rest of Canada might makeit too difficult or costly for Quebec to break away, and partly because support withinthe province for secession is waning — as indicated by new polls . Two referendums on independence have failed: overwhelmingly in 1980 and barely in 1995. The mostsignificant factor in- fluencing the Quebec question now, it appears, is this: 16 months after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec could not act alone to choose independence, the court's ruling is beginning to be translated into a real-world, practical scheme. Thecourt's decision in August last year wasnotself-executing.It madeit clear that it would be up to the “political actors” — the governments of Canadaand its provinces — to negotiate basic princi: ples into reality. That is whatlast week's events were all about: a reality check on what probably has to be done, pragmatically, to solve the secession dispute. Thecourt's guiding principles: Quebec could secede only as a result of a negotiated constitutional amendment. Negotiations could comeonlyif a “clear majority” of Quebeckers voted for secession in a referendum, and onlyif the question put to the voters were a “clear”test of Cuban YAK-42Plane Crashes in Venezuela THE ASSOCIATEDPRESS CARACAS,Venezuela — A Cu. ban airplane carrying 22 people crashed Saturday, shortly before it was scheduled to land in the northern Venezuelan state of Car- abobo, the state's governorsaid. No information was immedi ately available about survivors. Rescue teams rushed late Saturdayto the site, in a mountainous area about 100 miles southwestof the capital ofCaracas, said Henrique Salas Feo, Carabobo's began. The next formal step in the The probable meaningof Chre- tien’s plan: If the measure is enacted in anything close to its current form, Quebec’s chances of being able to negotiate success- fully a plan ofsecession will have all but disappeared. The plan creates two giant hurdles:It requires agreement on how the questionofsecessionis to be framed in a referendum,and, even if a referendum passed by a sufficiently impressive majority, the plan requires agreement on the terms under which Quebec could separate, f Neither seems likely, so Quebec might wind upwith no option but to stay — unless it wanted to take drastic action that Quebeckers would notsupport. The Commons will not find a question to have been clear enough unless it tested Quebeckers’ views on a simple, stark choice: remain a part of Canada, orleaveit. It is up to the Commons to de- cide whata clear majority is. No number was stated,butit seemed obvious that 50 percent plus one vote of those taking part in the referendum would not be enough. Nonegotiations over the terms of secession would occur unless the Commonswas satisfied about the question’s clarity and result. Anynegotiations would focus not only on a constitutional amendmentto let Quebec depart, but also on the terms of doing so. One significant sticking point: Quebec would haveto negotiate over pos- sible loss of some of its present territory. Thus, the war of words goes on. The difference, though, could be this; In the ultimate constitutional reckoning, the Chretien govern- ment seems assured of having the Supreme Court on its side. aRiG SAME .DAY.St 487-6884 Leea TEES HAAGA INTERNET SERVICES $9.95* Santa’s handing out Guaranteed and Bump Certificate Account Options. Open a new America First Certificate Account today. You'll earn competitive rates and your choice of either a guaranteed rate or bumpoption on a minimum deposit of $500.It’s only available this holiday season throughJan. 11, 2000. Visit the branch nearest youorcall now: 627-0500 in Weber County, 546-0411 in Davis County, 966-5553 in Salt Lake County, 223-3900 in Utah County, 734-3600 in Box Elder County, 688-3800 in Washington County, or 1-800-999-3961 outside the Wasatch Front. governor. The plane, carrying 10 passen- members, took “Apevaly maybetegeedferwath ettnbiouel tnonsoanap & ENpain requ. |