f power. I think that is the methodology that is very much reflected in the attitudes and values of indigenous people. And that is a very valuable lesson that we can learn from the entirety of their experience. That I think is an important point.
Then it is also necessary to focus upon the role of the media. We live, of course in an age of technology and we have abundant information available to us. The recent developments connected with Internet are fascinating, they are indeed novel and they could not have been contemplated even two decades ago. But what is lacking is expertise to deal with, to analyze to synthesize the large volume of information that is available to us. And also relevant in that regard is the role of the bureaucracy.
We have a highly central bureaucracy and whatever we are able to achieve in regard to the protection of the rights of indigenous people, will be a reality only if the bureaucracy is sufficiently sensitized. What we need is a sensitive bureaucracy, but that is precisely what is lacking in many parts at the world of the present time.
So those are some of the infirmities and the deficiencies of which we should be acutely conscious. If we are in earnest about protecting the rights of indigenous peoples, I think we must also recognise the sanity of customary law. If you are interested in the rights of the indigenous peoples and the legal landscape, it is absolutely essential that customary legal systems should be protected.
In our own country we have in many matters of statutory regime that exists in juxtaposition with the customary laws. We have the Kandyan law, we have the Thesavalamy, we have elements of Muslim law that regulate matters such as marriage customs, rights of succession. Then, rights in respect of land.
These are all matters that are regulated by customary legal systems that apply to different sections of the population. There are also statutory provisions which can be invoked by any section of the community. For example, a Kandyan or a person subjective to Thesavalamy can marry under the General Marriages Ordinance.
We have a general statute called a General Marriages Ordinance. Any person who may be subject to a principle, to a regime of customary law, can repudiate that law. He is capable of repudiating the customary law and he can choose instead to be governed by the provisions of a statute that has general application.
So there is really a choice of law. There is, as it were, an internal conflict of laws within the national legal system. It is necessary to protect and to preserve these spheres of operation of customary laws and to ensure that statute law does not make unwarranted inroads into the customary systems that are applicable. And that can be illustrated in many ways both in regard to the substantive law and in regard to procedural law.
The indigenous systems play down as much as possible the cohesive element of law. They believe very much in methods of conciliation and arbitration. At the lowest level, the village elders will get together, people who are respected in the community will endeavour to resolve these problems in a speedy and amicable manner in a manner that is acceptable to both parties to the dispute.
And you proceed like that from tear to tier to tier and it is only the most complex cases which are not capable of resolution by any other method that go up to highest judicial tribunal in the country. But in Sri Lanka they go to the Supreme Court as a court of first instance rather than as a court of final instance. We have not applied any system of arbitration or conciliation at all and we are very much wedded to an adversarial tradition. The whole of our legal system is very adversarial in content and complexion.
Now that again is a dramatic contrast to the attitudes of indigenous peoples and the basis on which their legal and judicial system is constructed. It seems to be quite ridiculous to apply the adversarial system in typical cases relating to the violation of fundamental rights. The adversarial system works well enough in situations where the 