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.
