ronment, and that language is the key vehi-
cle for conveying the aboriginal ethic of car-
ing for the land.The Wanniyalaeto (Veddas), Sri Lanka’s
indigenous ‘first people’, who have inhabited
the island’s semi-evergreen monsoon dry
forest for millennia, are facing serious chal-
lenges to their livelihoods and cultural sur-
vival.^39 Development activities have drasti-
cally reduced their traditional forest habitat,
displaced many Wanniyalaeto from the for-
est, disrupted their social cohesion, and
forced the assimilation of many of them.
Many, however, have chosen to return to
their ancestral territories and, with the help
of an international NGO, are developing a
plan to protect and maintain both the local
biodiversity and their indigenous culture in
an integrated fashion. The plan will allow
Wanniyalaeto families to return to live in
and manage their ancestral habitat, creating
a sanctuary both for the local flora and
fauna and for Wanniyalaeto culture. In this
sanctuary, the Wanniyalaeto will recover
self-reliance, self-respect, and social cohe-
sion, re-establish their holistic relationshipwith their habitat, rekindle their indigenous
traditions of environmental management
and use of wild foods and medicinal plants,
document and disseminate their envi-
ronmental lore, and benefit from bilin-
gual education opportunities in both
the Wanniyalaeto and the Sinhala lan-
guages.Documenting and promoting
biocultural diversity
Examples of grassroots initiatives like
these could be multiplied manifold.
Each and all of them provide signifi-
cant insights into an integrated
approach to the maintenance and
restoration of biological, cultural, and
linguistic diversity— an approach that,
by and large, still eludes larger-scale,
top-down approaches to environmental
as well as cultural conservation.
Making these experiences and the les-
sons that can be drawn from them
more widely known to a larger audi-
ence might help promote this integrated
approach beyond the local level and make it
more accepted, indeed desirable, also for
governmental, non-governmental, academic,
and other institutions at national and inter-
national levels. A project developed by
Terralingua, an international non-profit
organisation devoted to researching and
promoting biocultural diversity,^40 seeks to
do just that. Terralingua is compiling materi-
als for a “Global Source Book on Biocultural
Diversity” (see Box 1), which is meant to
provide the field of biocultural diversity with
its first global source of information.The ultimate goal of this effort is to create a
world-wide network of like-minded organi-
sations and individuals that, together, can
better work to define, accomplish, and pro-
mote the goals of biocultural diversity pro-
tection, maintenance, and revitalisation, to
the benefit of each and all. Forming a com-
mon front should help raise the visibility and
acceptability of the concept and practice ofUnderstanding aand mmeasuring bbiocultural ddiversity
Figure 4. Barbara Sturt, a Jaru woman from the
Kimberley, Western Australia, telling about her great-
grandmother’s “stories about place” to linguist Joseph