Gaelic tradition bearing and reconnecting our communities

What can we learn from the multigenerational wisdom of Gaelic tradition bearers about reconnecting our communities to places where we live, to our past and to our future in the changing climate?

To explore these questions, Our Story Weaver, Lesley Anne, talked to Gaelic Officer for CHARTS, Àdhamh Ó Broin, about his journey into Gaelic tradition-bearing and activism, the role of land-based ritual in modern world and seven-generation thinking.

The interview was inspired by the Spring equinox event, “Dùthchas Beò revitalising reciprocity with the Gaelic landscape”. This took place at ancient sacred sites of Kilmartin and Knapdale in Argyle and was a collaboration between Àdhamh and SCCAN’s network coordinator for Argyle and Bute, Marie Stonehouse.

Resources:

CHARTS https://www.chartsargyllandisles.org/

Dùthchas Beò event https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/556630325287

Gaelic pronunciation https://learngaelic.net/dictionary/index.jsp

“The Good Ancestor – How to think long term in short-term world” by Roman Krznaric https://www.romankrznaric.com/good-ancestor

“Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18693771

Transcript:

[00:00:36] Kaska Hempel: Hello, it's Kaska, one of your Story Weavers. I'd like to take you to one of my favourite places in Scotland, Kill Martin Glen in Argyll. Imagine it's an early spring afternoon and you're standing at the wide bottom of a shallow glen surrounded by gentle hills. Dotted with trees on the verge of bursting into leaf.

[00:01:01] Kaska Hempel: Birds fleet around in their branches and chatter with the spring excitement. You listen for the trademark territorial cuckoo calls, but they've not made it back from Africa yet. They'll be along in May, together with the blue bells. The sound of cars passing through the village breaks through the nature's spring soundscape, but it comes back even stronger after every wave of traffic.

[00:01:26] Kaska Hempel: You look down the wide grassy glen and the skies moving medley of blue and the gray cloud. The sun hits your face with a fleeting kiss as the shapes shift above your head. In front of you is a circle of standing stones manmade, but they've somehow become part of the landscape covered in colourful mosaic of lichens.

[00:01:50] Kaska Hempel: The more than 350 similar ancient monuments within a six mile radius of this village, with 150 of them prehistoric standing witness to more than 5,000 years of human history of this place. Your bare feet sink into cold, wet grass, and it feels like this place along with all the generations who'd passed through it is embracing you like a long lost friend.

[00:02:18] Kaska Hempel: This is how I imagined the setting of Dùthchas Beò, a Spring Equinox event, which took place at ancient sacred sites of Kilmartin and Knapdale. It explored a revitalizing reciprocity with a Gaelic landscape. It was a collaboration between the Gaelic Officer Àdhamh Ó Broin from Argyll and Isles Culture, Heritage and Arts organisation, and SCCAN's Network Coordinator for Argyll and Bute, Marie Stonehouse.

[00:02:46] Kaska Hempel: So what can we learn from the multi-generational wisdom of Gaelic tradition bearers about reconnecting our communities to places where we live, to our past and to our future in this changing climate? To answer these questions, our Story Weaver Lesley Anne talked to Àdhamh about his journey into Gaelic tradition bearing and activism, the role of land-based ritual in modern world and seven generation thinking.

[00:03:14] Kaska Hempel: But before we go any further, I would like to profusely apologize for my Gaelic pronunciation in this introduction. I'm a complete novice at this. Now, to start us off, Àdhamh introduces two concepts at the core of Gaelic identity and culture.

[00:03:32] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Dùthchas, which is the name of the event. Dùthchas Beò. Dùthchas, coming from the concept of dùth, which is an old word for people, and dùthaich, which is country. Land that is inhabited by people and therefore dùthchas is that inimitable connection with the place where your people have sprung. Now, for me though, this is quite difficult to articulate fully. Because I don't have a great sense of dùthchas with the place that my people came from because they're all gone.

[00:04:07] Àdhamh Ó Broin: They're all either cleared or forced to leave through economic circumstance. And I've been getting back up to my mother's area in, in Latheron Parish, in Caithness and getting my bare seat in the ground and trying to encourage the dùthchas to return to me there. And I've been doing the same in Ireland as well. But Argyll, the area that I grew up in, in the area that I'm probably most well known for being a tradition bear in, I don't have any ancestor connection to, so I've been adopted by the land there.

[00:04:36] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I feel very, very welcome there and I feel respected and appreciated by the land, by some people in the area. But for people who perhaps let's just see, you know, your from the Isle of Barra. And you know, you can trace back several generations on all sides. And so you and your people have always been from Barra. Then that sense of dùthchas is incredibly strong because you not only still inhabit the land of your ancestors, but you can trace the movements of your ancestors, you know, right across the landscape.

[00:05:05] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So that's the dùthchas thing. It's ancestral relationship with land and feeling of connection with it. So if dùthchas is the land and your relationship with it and your right to remain on that land and being in relationship with that land, then dualchas is the manner in which you described that relationship. So dualchas is you know, your stories, your songs, your Proverbs, your local history, all that side of things.

[00:05:27] Àdhamh Ó Broin: But it's specifically that which is inherited from generations before you. You know, so dùthchas is the land and your relationship to that and dualchais is the stories of the consistent relationship with that land as told by your ancestors. So they're utterly crucial to the, well, my name's if I was to introduce myself in sort of Ancestral styles you might put it in Is mise Àdhamh, mac Sheumais bhig, 'ic Sheumais mhóir, 'ic Diarmuid, 'ic Sheumais, 'ic Mhurchaidh, 'ic Sheumais.

[00:05:58] Àdhamh Ó Broin: That's referencing seven generations of my father's line and all the way back to Wicklow in Ireland. And so I suppose that if you're referencing seven generations back and honouring your ancestors, that far back then you're kinda making a commitment to be a good seventh generation. If we're lucky enough to get to that stage with the state things are in, but you know, so, that's who I am in the Gaelic sense in terms of professional end of things.

[00:06:28] Àdhamh Ó Broin: My work goes from very organic tradition bearing, picking up things that are about to get lost and keeping them and hopefully passing them on. So that's culture, songs, stories, Proverbs, anecdotes, words, idioms. It goes from that right across to consulting on films. At the moment, is mise Oifigear Cultair Ghàidhlig, i'm Gaelic Culture officer at CHARTS Argyll and the Isles, so we're a member led arts organisation and in that I have remit for Gaelic culture.

[00:07:07] Lesley Anne Rose: I mean, that sounds like one of the best jobs in the world, but you've also got the role of a tradition bearer. I'd love it if you could share a little bit more about what that role actually involves, and how, if anything, your journey to becoming a tradition bearer is in any way linked to your climate change journey.

[00:07:24] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Yeah. I'd always been environmentally focused since I was a child. You know, I think like anybody else with their head on straight, you know, they have spent a reasonable amount of time watching David Attenborough as a child, you know? So, you know, it came from that. And I remember there was a programme called Fragile Earth.

[00:07:41] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I used to watch that every time it was on, and I was sort of ethically vegetarian, you know, was brought up that way with my father, in fact. Growing up and I just always had one eye on that. Grew up in the country and just felt intrinsically connected to nature and it was bonkers that they were mistreating it. I mean, it just didn't make any sense whatsoever.

[00:07:59] Àdhamh Ó Broin: My father's people are all Irish, my mother's folk are predominantly from Highland Caithness, although I grew up in Argyll so a wee bit of a kind of Gaelic mix there. Highlanders and Irish folk are essentially one people, the Gaelic people, and folk from the Isle of Man as well. So it's really, it's an ethnicity, you know, and it happens to now be

[00:08:14] Àdhamh Ó Broin: quite divided by geopolitical boundaries, but the vast majority of people on the ground in the Highlands and Islands saw themselves as Gaels you know. But I never got that immediate everyday sense of who I was. I'm not a first language Gaelic speaker. As a child growing up in Cowal, I didn't have the language or culture passed down by my parents, but was very strongly encouraged by my only grandmother to pick the language of our people back up.

[00:08:44] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I came home to there after 10 years in Glasgow, and found that the language is on its very, very last legs, local dialect in central Argyll. And so I began to, as I said before, collect all these things that were getting lost and interviewing old people, some of whom couldn't speak the language fluently, but had loads of memories of it being spoken in words and praises and all sorts of things.

[00:09:11] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And then I brought up my children, with myself, my wife and three kids, all of them are fluent Gaelic speakers. And myself, my wife. Our three. Our first language speakers. I've never spoken any English in the house to them, so that means that the dialect of central Argyll is a living language once again, even though all the native speakers have unfortunately now passed away.

[00:09:33] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I suppose what happened was that. Because I had to struggle so hard to get the language back. I mean, not that it was difficult learning it, it felt like just placing bits of the jigsaw puzzle back into my brain, you know where they belong. Back into my soul. But you know, it's still challenging to do that with a young family and working and all the rest of it.

[00:09:51] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So as the years rolled on, that momentum of learning the language never left me. Once I had the language fluently, then I started going around the Highlands and, and recording, you know, tradition bearers and recording the dialects that were dying, you know, and many of my friends, my old friends and in different glens and islands and what have you have now passed on.

[00:10:16] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I'm very thankful to them for holding onto the language long enough for me to be able to learn it from them. But, I don't have that sense of intergenerational transmission. And so it's been a sense of rather than just what's normal and, you know, been happening for generations, it's been a sense of urgency and necessity that's caused me to tradition bear.

[00:10:35] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I saw a lot of things that were being lost, as I said, and I didn't see anybody else holding onto them, and I saw they were about to go, you know, and you're talking about spruilleachd, it's like, you know, almost like the crumbs that are left after you've touched yourself a slice of bread. You know, the breads actually long gone, but these crumbs are still there.

[00:10:54] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And if you pick them up, you can more or less sort of, you know, get a chewable bite out them, you know. And that's I suppose what tradition bearing is all about in a minoritized culture that is, you know, lost sort of 95% of its richness and speakership. So, tradition bearing for me is something that I've stumbled into backwards in an accidental fashion and now realize that I'm a tradition bearer and now realise that there aren't that many people like me, especially in the mainland, and it's almost like you're gathering up all the family photographs as you run outta the burning house, and then you're standing outside them all and suddenly you're the keeper of the photographs. But actually, you know, you hadn't even looked at them in 20 years, you know, and suddenly it's like, well, these are really important because everything else is gone.

[00:11:40] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Ultimately, if they're valuable things, somebody needs to pick them up and safeguard them.

[00:11:46] Lesley Anne Rose: That's lovely. There's so much sort of vivid imagery that you've shared with us. Thank you. That phrase you used about, I came to it backwards. I would just like to pick that a little bit more in relation to climate change.

[00:11:56] Lesley Anne Rose: Partly from interviewing someone up in Skye who is also a tradition bearer and they used the really beautiful metaphor or analogy that tradition bearing is the same as rowing a boat. Although you are, you are going forwards, but all the time you are looking backwards. And they were very keen to impress that tradition bearing isn't something that's about sort of stuck in the past about old sepia photos. It is very much a role that has a responsibility to look forwards as well. And just again, in terms of that sort of, onus around climate and looking after the land and tradition and people, how do you see that role of a tradition bearer in safeguarding the future, if you like, as well as the past?

[00:12:37] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Yeah, it's a great question. And I would agree strongly with the person that you'd spoken to there. I would just add that I'm not scared to look back to the past. I think in the modern world, people, they almost feel like they need to virtual signal about technology to say we are okay with technology.

[00:12:52] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Yes, we are grasping it all. Yes, we want it all, we're not against it. But you see, as anybody who's aware of environmental degradation, we know that technology in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing unless it is weighed up with the potential consequences and ramifications of its overuse.

[00:13:07] Àdhamh Ó Broin: We know that from the industrial revolution. You don't have to constantly convince people that Gails aren't old quarry people in sweaters, you know, stuck on crofts who never ever go anywhere else. We, you know, we know that's not true, but that comes from a long, long period of internalized colonialism. And you know, people were told it was holding back and told that, you know, if you were from the Highlands and Islands, you're just a daft Teuchter and all the rest of it.

[00:13:31] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, it's inbuilt in people so I understand it, but I think we need to get away from it. It's actually ok to value old things and it's okay to think for some people to feel much more comfortable with old things and older people and older traditions than they do with a lot of the traps in the modern world.

[00:13:49] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I'm certainly one of them, you know. So in terms of the environmental connection though, I don't believe climate change is happening or there's nasty things going on with the environment in the world. Because if anything that I've been told in a top down fashion by, you know, academic institutions or governments or organisations, I believe that there's something fundamentally wrong with the natural patterns in the world because our lore doesn't fit the weather anymore.

[00:14:19] Àdhamh Ó Broin: That's why I believe it. You look at phrases and things used to describe the weather that have been in place for decades, if not centuries, if not longer than that, and they don't fit anymore. There's one, for instance, you know,

[00:14:34] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I'm paraphrasing that, I can't remember the exact phrases, but if there's snow in the ditches in early February, then you know that the worst of the winter's actually over. But if it's really dry and warm and sunny at that point, then you know that you're gonna get a right, nasty, flurry of snow still.

[00:14:51] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And of course, every year you don't necessarily get that sort of thing. You don't get these signs, you don't get these things happening where you can just set your watch by it practically. And so that for me is where tradition bearing and keeping this language used, allows us to map out what's going on with the weather and what changes are happening because these phrases are a set of orienteering points that you can map the wheel of the year through.

[00:15:16] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And if things are out of place then you've got that ability to explain quite explicitly how by reference to these things that have been in place for centuries.

[00:15:25] Lesley Anne Rose: I mean I love that idea. That sort of local knowledge is just as important and should be taken just as seriously as any sort of top-down information and just how empowering that is and how respectful that is to both our ancestors, but also our own knowledge as well.

[00:15:40] Lesley Anne Rose: I'd just like to expand upon in what you've just explained. The first phrase that you said, which I made my ears prick up. Tradition bearers aren't afraid of the past. And certainly what I found with a lot of the climate change work that I've done within communities and on a wider scale as well, there's been a real push to heal the past. To tell untold stories of the past, if you like.

[00:16:03] Lesley Anne Rose: Before any planning for any more sustainable, just future. And I just wondered, is there a role there or do you see a role within the tradition bearers that is actually healing the past, respecting the past, telling the story of the past, understanding the past as a natural first step before we can even begin to think about a just transition or a more sustainable future?

[00:16:30] Àdhamh Ó Broin: In terms of the past and healing. Things that have happened. I mean, we carry it all in our dna. We carry it all in our bodies, you know, keeps the score. It's about your life experiences. And I can't remember the author there, but it's about how your body essentially is a carrier for all the trauma you experience through your life. Well, all the good things and the bad things. But we're also carriers of all that our ancestors have experienced because, well, where else can it go?

[00:16:56] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, depending on people's religious beliefs, maybe some of it does dissipate when the soul leaves the body. But who knows? Who knows? It's all speculation. But I don't think there's any doubt that ancestral trauma is a real thing, and I feel it implicitly whenever I go over to Ireland and I visit mass grave sites from the genocide there are otherwise known as the famine, you know, all the rest of it. I find myself having to go through very, very heavy leaving phases for all these things.

[00:17:26] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I've got one cousin still left in the place my mother's people belong to. Otherwise, I have to walk through the ruins of the houses of my people who are forced to leave as economic migrants. The idea is that you're having to walk through all these shadows of past brutalities and you're having to somehow through all that hurt and pain.

[00:17:50] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Extract from the cold ashes of the hearths of your ancestors, the embers that are worth taking with you, and carry them carefully out of these ruins and find somewhere appropriate to start a new fire with them. And that's really hard. You know, nobody gives you a guide book for these things.

[00:18:07] Àdhamh Ó Broin: It's ancestral work. Well, it's both ancestral cultural imperative. And as when I'm communicating with a lot of my indigenous friends, you know, they'll talk about their elders. And I think, yeah, lucky sods, whatever, because they've still got elders. I mean, you think of the hellish grief that so many indigenous people have been through, and you think of that, and yet they still have so many people around the world.

[00:18:30] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So many indigenous people have still retained that intergenerational connection where their elders are still important to them. And in so many Western societies, they're just getting packed into old folks homes. And I mean, these are the gold of the human race. You know, the golden generation. You've got knowledge that is, it's irrevocable because it only comes from life experience.

[00:18:50] Àdhamh Ó Broin: My elders are people that i've bumped into, because I was looking for people like them and ended up forming really close friendships. And so when I talk about my elders, you know, I'll talk about. Somebody up in Melness in the far north of Sutherland, even though my people don't come from there.

[00:19:09] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I talk about a friend of mine who just passed away at the new year. There was a fisherman from Applecross. You know, I'll talk about, the fellow who was the last speaker of my dialect in mid Argyll, who passed away heading for three years ago now. And yet none of these people are blood related to me.

[00:19:27] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So you're having to sort of cradle these last embers and you're having to try and support people who are already old and knackered and used to their knowledge being sidelined. You're having to hold them and hold space for them to give them the chance, and breathe that last bit of life in so that they can bestow something to you as a legacy that you can pass on your children and start the intergenerational transmission again.

[00:19:54] Àdhamh Ó Broin: That's the one thing that's different for myself and other people who have lost the intergenerational structure to folk who have managed to maintain right relationship with their elders, is that there's no guidebook. And when you're seeking these things out and you're wondering how to take them into the future, there is no hard and fast rules and you're having to fly by the seat of your pants with nothing but your instinct and your intuition.

[00:20:18] Lesley Anne Rose: You've described that just so very beautifully, that connection that you have with land and how that influences your role. Within that, do you feel that a tradition bearer is very much a sort of role for rural setting? Can people live in that urban setting and have that same sense of tradition and tradition bearing?

[00:20:35] Lesley Anne Rose: As you can clearly, if you've got that much sort of wider daily, deeper connection to the natural landscape,

[00:20:41] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I think you can, and the manner in which they can is to lean perhaps slightly more than you might in a rural setting with a thinner population to lean on people more in an urban setting. When you think about, for instance, Glasgow, I went school in Glasgow and here I would say that tenement life was an incredible setting where traditions came and went.

[00:21:11] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Were upheld and let go of, you know, where there was a sense of etiquette. You know, even it was just about who was cleaning the landing, you know, and people looked after one another's kids and the kids all ran about the dunnys out the back and you know, there was a absolute sense of community.

[00:21:28] Àdhamh Ó Broin: There's a sense of everybody looking after one another. Yeah. Terrible problems with drink, domestic violence, unemployment, poverty. Absolutely. It was all there. But the fact of the matter is people dealt with it undoubtedly as a community, you know, working Glaswegian people undoubtedly had a sense of identity that was pretty unique and it's still there.

[00:21:48] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And that the lovely thing is that if you get out and about in Glasgow, you stand and talk to somebody at a bus stop or on a bus or in a pub, you'll still get that richness of expression and humor and story. An anecdote in history. And there's no doubt that in terms of richness of expression and sense of place, there are people in Glasgow that are just as capable of carrying that forward as there would be in a rural setting.

[00:22:15] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And, you know, a crofting community in Lewis or wherever, it's a different flavour, but it's the process of tradition bearing. The idea of holding onto things that are valuable and passing them forward intentionally. Because they helped to express a sense of place and a sense of history and a sense of what it means to be a person within that space.

[00:22:36] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And that's really what tradition bearing's all about. I'm trying to get back to this idea at the moment and, you know, the event with yourselves was part of that. I would love it if people could accept this idea that actually there's not a single person on planet Earth that isn't a tradition bearer because all of our history and all of the way that we as individuals have experienced things are all unique perspectives.

[00:23:00] Àdhamh Ó Broin: The difference between not being a tradition bearer and being a tradition bearer is activating the tradition bearing mechanism within you to appreciate and be aware in a daily sense that what you know and what you've experienced and the perspective you've built through that is actually, it's a form of tradition bearing, and you don't have to be a great talker, a great storyteller.

[00:23:28] Àdhamh Ó Broin: A great singer. You simply have to be willing to pass it on and pass it on in as digestible a format as possible. So tell people the fascinating things. Tell people the exciting things. Tell people the difficult things. Don't shy away. From, you know, the fact that there could be a big story under seemingly incidental details.

[00:23:50] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I've said in the urban sense, you lean on people because they're all around you, you know, and maintaining community and being able to actually struggle against malign influences, you know, such as climate change. It is about staying in communication with people. So you need to lean on people in an urban setting because it's too easy to just sit in your box and stare at screens, you know?

[00:24:11] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And before screens came into things, there was a verve and an intensity to urban life, which has since died off because people are stuck with the latest opiate of the masses, which is no longer religion. It's now social media. Now, rural communities would maybe say that they relied on each other more, but that's simply because of a different type of infrastructure.

[00:24:32] Àdhamh Ó Broin: There's a less recognisable infrastructure, and so people relied on one another in a practical sense, perhaps more, but there's no doubt that you're more socially isolated in a rural setting when houses are further apart. So you rely on the the land there, you have the opportunity to sit quietly and listen to the rhythms of the land.

[00:24:52] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So that could be the wind, that could be the larks singing above your head, you know, it could be bees flying past your ears, could be seagulls, could be whatever. And exposing yourself to these rhythms dictates the manner in which you tradition bear. So if you are somebody who has long held exposure to a rural setting and either generations of it or just something you've done yourself to try and return to that tradition, then you'll find your tradition in the manner which you do it.

[00:25:19] Àdhamh Ó Broin: If it's not set by ancestral accumulation of expression, then it's set by natural rhythms. Because technology does provide artificial rhythms. It provides hums and buzzes and things that are imperceptible, we don't even know are happening. And glares and things that interrupt the bio clock. Our sleeping patterns. So getting out and paying close attention to the rhythms of nature and allowing that to start to reprogram you again, learning your own ancestral language, whatever.

[00:25:49] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And if you're English, you already speak your ancestral language which is a fantastic advantage. Even looking into local dialect that's been lost, whatever, learning these things and exposing yourself to the natural rhythms. So traditional rhythms and natural rhythms. Then programs the manner in which you tradition bear.

[00:26:04] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So the urban thing is there's a more intense mix of people and it's possibly more immediately social and it's noisier and it's more active, and the rural ones quieter, but they're both still perfectly valid forms of tradition bearing. You just need to lay yourself open to it and believe that the things that you feel are beautiful and worthwhile and necessary to tell are gonna be equally so for others.

[00:26:27] Lesley Anne Rose: I mean, that's just a lovely lesson for anyone to take into life about our story being beautiful and to believe in it and to tell it. And I suppose on a wider level, and this isn't me, I hope, putting words into your mouth, what you seem to have articulated about tradition bearing is it's about holding, telling and holding that story of the community.

[00:26:46] Lesley Anne Rose: And honouring and respecting it and making sure everyone has voice within that, and whatever setting that is. The story is, I suppose, the glue that holds communities and people together. And we all know that strong, resilient communities are gonna be essential in terms of a changing climate and a just transition, which makes that role of that story holding, that tradition bearer, just even more important as we move into changing times.

[00:27:11] Lesley Anne Rose: I think what would be really nice now if you just give us some examples or just talk through actually some of the work that you've done. Now, you mentioned that you've collaborated with Marie Stonehouse, who's the SCCAN Regional Climate Action Network Coordinator for Argyll and Bute, and that you recently did a celebration of the Equinox.

[00:27:28] Lesley Anne Rose: I wondered if you could just talk us through that event, what you did, the thinking behind it.

[00:27:34] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Marie was great craic and we got on a call similar to this one and before we'd gone even 20 minutes I think we'd already come up with this idea. And i've been stepping into ceremony with different indigenous nations, you know, consistently over the last.

[00:27:56] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So six, seven years. And initially, of course, people would probably say, well, how could you possibly know how to hold ceremony with indigenous people on a land that's lost all that ceremony? That's been entirely Christianized. And since then, secularized. How would you know how to hold natural ceremony and well, I didn't have a clue what to do to bring people into ceremonies, the first clue.

[00:28:27] Àdhamh Ó Broin: But I knew that I had to bring my kids through some kind of coming of age because we've lost coming of age ceremonies. And it's strange though, that perhaps people are so questioning of the idea of ritual and ceremony when they're perfectly happy to get married. Perfectly happy to go through that whole rig ma role, which really speaking for many folk is completely bizarre and unnecessary.

[00:28:49] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I mean, I'm married myself, but you know, a lot of other people won't be, and when they find that it's perfectly adequate and they just love the person they're with, and that's great. Don't need to go through the rig ma role. But for some people the rig ma role is very Important. It's like, again to use this analogy, a set of orienteering posts. That you can work through so you can disengage your creative mind for a moment and just be brought through different stages in order for your brain and your soul and your heart to turn through the rotations of the wheel and move through the experience, without having to necessarily guide yourself through it.

[00:29:20] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And that's what ritual's all about. So let's take this concept back a few notches and let's think about, I think I was saying to the folk when we were out the other day for the event with Marie, Dùthchas Beò. I said to the folk at the beginning about this idea of ritual and it's like, well, let's say you haven't seen very elderly, very knowledgeable, very beautiful soul, a relative for 30, 40 years because you've been overseas working and you only just return.

[00:29:50] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And I said to them, well, you know what would you do? What was the first thing you would do? And they're like, well, we'd go and visit. Right. Okay. And what do you think you would do when you visited? Well, I'd definitely take something with me like, you know, a nice, you know, packet of shortbread or, you know, I'd bake some scones or something.

[00:30:07] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Right. Nice. I like your thinking there. Great. And then what would you do once you got there? Well, you know, we'd have the kettle on. Have a cup of tea, maybe have a wee dram. Right, exactly. And then what would you do? Oh, well, I think we would just, we'd just talk. We'd just chat. Right. Okay. So you've pretty much set out the steps that are necessary to get back into good right relationship with somebody.

[00:30:33] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So I said, well, why would it be any different with the land?

[00:30:39] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know? And everyone's like, ah, the man's got a point. Now you think about it, right? You visit the land, you get back in familiarity and you say, look, I'm back. I know I've been away so long and I'm really sorry, but look. Quite frankly us is a species in the Western world. We've been away quite a long time.

[00:30:57] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So just letting you know I'm back. I wonder if I could come and visit you again sometime. And when you come and visit, well, you bring an offering, you know, and you make that offering to the land because the lands your host, you know the land's giving you beauty. It's giving you fresh water to drink sometimes.

[00:31:16] Àdhamh Ó Broin: It's giving you bird song. It's entertaining you. It feels beautiful, and you get fresh water to drink out of aruns and rivers and bogs, and it's giving you everything you could possibly need. You've got berries to pick and eat. It's feeding you. It's giving you a libation. And what, you show up and don't offer anything. I mean, what? What? It's just rude, but for me it's incredibly verging on pragmatic.

[00:31:37] Àdhamh Ó Broin: The idea of ritual and ceremony in the land. It's what I do. I return to the land and I make some small offerings, and I offer a wee dram and I have a wee dram myself and I have a conversation with the land. And I go to places where people have been having conversations for centuries. So I'm not the first one showing up here and going, oh, I'm, I'm gonna have some mad new age ritual happening. No, quite the opposite. I'm showing up in a place, say the place we went to for Dùthchas Beò. For the event. Where there's a frustration cross. So Christian Pilgrims have come off the road for hundreds of years and said their prayers and there's a well there.

[00:32:13] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And they've done their absolutions and then carried on along the way. The Christians, let's be honest, could be crafted back in those early days, they picked sites that were already in use and went, right, you know, we'll have it, you know, and we've continued to accept it would be Christianized. So before that place we went to. Kilmory Oib it's called. Ób Chille Mhoire. That place would've had a pagan past.

[00:32:35] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I say Pagan, that's what we call it now. It would've had a land-based religious practice. And so for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, people have been coming and making offerings and doing their absolutions and saying their prayers at that point. So me going back there and doing that and making these offerings and spending that time and getting back into conversation with the land and reestablishing a working relationship and perhaps even after time, it becomes a friendship.

[00:33:00] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And I certainly found it out. When I went to these places to start with. I mean, I was just stotting about. Not really sure what to do because, you know, it takes time, it takes consistency and it's the same when you go into somebody's house and especially an old person, they kinda go, this person's all about.

[00:33:15] Àdhamh Ó Broin: The intentions are. I mean, the land's the same, the land does the same thing. And eventually you realize that you're incredibly comfortable there and you go through the same ritual every time, and you just feel held by the land. You feel supported in what you're doing and you can confess all your fears and doubts and it just hears you and it holds you.

[00:33:32] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Now, some people might do that, if they're a Christian, they might do it in a Christian way. They might make their players to Jesus, to God, that's absolutely grand. That works just fine as well. You know, if they're Muslim, they might decide to roll out their prayer mat and say their prayers in that spot.

[00:33:45] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, brillant. That doesn't make a blind bit of difference to me because ultimately it's, you know, it's about reestablishing regular, meaningful relationship with the land, whatever the flavour of that may be, and doing that with other indigenous people who still have that practice and have had that practice handed down to them.

[00:34:06] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Remarkable the amount of things that they recognize in my practice. Go, that's exactly what we do. How'd you know how to do that? And I go, I dunno, the land just kept me right. I dunno how to do that. No, I don't. I dunno. I couldn't even answer that. They, they're like, you're on the right path because that's how we do things and you know, we've got thousands of years tradition on our site, you know.

[00:34:28] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So stepping into ceremony and offering indigenous people when they visited, the chance to take their socks and shoes off and to get into relationship and to come and visit our great elder who is the land, you know, to come and visit mother earth. And so folk from the Maori nation, Mohawk from the, uh, Wet’suwet’en and Co-Salish and Tlingit and Gumbaynggirr people from Australia and Karajá people from the Amazon rainforest you know, Mapuche from Chile and people from the Andes and you know, and also Basque folk you know and Welsh folk, and Irish folk, you know.

[00:34:49] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So we've had all kinds of people that belong to indigenous nations and have an ongoing relationship with the land. Come to Argyll and get into a relationship with our land and leave their blessings and bring their energy. And every single time I've had someone visit, I've learned something. All of these indigenous people, which has then fed back into my practice.

[00:35:11] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Now remember my friend Clark Webb, a fantastic language revitaliser of Gumbaynggirr people in Australia. And he says to me, how do you introduce yourself to the land? And I was like, well, I sometimes take a little saliva and I rub it on a rock. If I come to a sacred place that has a longstanding, you know, standing stone, I find myself rubbing my saliva.

[00:35:27] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And he was like, ah. He said, because when our people come to the land, we take sweat off our brow and rub it on the land to introduce ourselves to land. So how did you know how to do that? I'm like, well, I don't know, maybe I saw something about you doing that or like your other indigenous peoples doing that.

[00:35:42] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I dunno where it came from, but it was intuitive and it stuck and then it turned out other people did similar things and then it got the stage where i was like, well this is all very well, you know, with having fantastic guests from all around the world. But ultimately if we're going to. We're gonna turn this situation around and get people paying attention to their environment and investing in the environment and thinking of it is something that is crucially important because otherwise they're held by nothing.

[00:36:10] Àdhamh Ó Broin: They exist in a vacuum, you know, then we need to start sharing this stuff. And so that's how we got to the point where when I started talking with Marie, then it seemed natural. You use the partnership between CHARTS and SCCAN. As the point to begin to share this with folk that belong to these islands and not just special guest appearances as it were. You know, so more like an open mic, rather a touring act.

[00:36:38] Lesley Anne Rose: That's lovely. I mean, what you've just explained really has made it very accessible for people who are confused. Don't know how to begin that to reconnect with our landscape, wherever that is, whether that's an urban park or the coast or a forest.

[00:36:55] Lesley Anne Rose: I would really love to return to what you mentioned at the start about seven generations and seven generation thinking. Which is a concept that really chimes with me because I live in a community that's seven generations old. So it's a really nice hook for the residents here to think about what we need to do now.

[00:37:13] Lesley Anne Rose: To be good ancestors and think in terms of the coming seven generations and what they'll need from us. So in terms of that sort of seven generation thinking, if you want to unpack that a bit more, but also this might be a bit of a cheesy question, but if you could go back seven generations, what would you thank your elders for?

[00:37:33] Lesley Anne Rose: And then I suppose equally because, you know, the kind of subject we're talking about is a changing climate. If you could imagine your children's, children's, children's seven generations coming back in time to you now, what do you think they would ask you for?

[00:37:48] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Yeah, quite challenging. I think they'll articulate this because I suppose if I had carried on, in the vein that was set for me, then I would've just carried on into more isolation and you know, more of a socially fragmented state. I have a half brother, but I'm an only child from my parents, and by the time it got to me, they were sort of an accidental couple. I'm an accidental baby, you know, my parents split up very quickly after that. So there's a lot of accidentality to my situation and my people being quite distinct.

[00:38:25] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, highland, lot of them, part of the free church, and then Irish Catholics, which is a classic Glasgow story in fact. But, everything had fragmented to the most incredible degree. The time it got to meet my Irish people. The Irishness had been completely jettisoned by the time it came to my father. Absolutely jettisoned.

[00:38:41] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Anything Irish had been thrown in the bin, you know, to save further generations from the trauma of, I mean, you know, 1920s Glasgow and the anti-Catholic, anti Irish racism is absolutely horrific. The Razor gangs flying about and all rest of it. So the time it came down to me, there really couldn't have been much more lost.

[00:39:02] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So when I look back through those seven generations, you know, if I go from myself, I go to my father who was a World War II vet, I go to his father who was a World War I vet, and my father had PTSD. My grandfather died of his wounds. He was machine gun gas kicked by a horse, my father's PTSD that affected his entire life.

[00:39:25] Àdhamh Ó Broin: He campaigned lifelong for nuclear disarmament. You know, he used to debate with Jimmy Reid down at the Clyde side. You know, my father is right in the thick of it all. Hung around with Roy McLellan, the publisher, and Alasdair Gray, you know, and Tom Lennon, all these people in Glasgow authors at the time. All the rest of it. And a lot of the Glasgow artists as well.

[00:39:42] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And that was because of the experiences in the war. And then his father, my father sat at his bedside, you know, he was 12 and so his father died of his first World War wounds, you know, and then his father died after a pulmonary embolism, after being assaulted in a police cell. He was a policeman.

[00:39:59] Àdhamh Ó Broin: An Irishman come over to Glasgow who was a police inspector ultimately, and then, you know, his father before that then is the genocide survivor, you know, survivor of the famine in Ireland. And when I'm looking back through all these, you know, the amount of trauma that's come down to me and I'm the first generation to turn back round and face it all.

[00:40:17] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So looking back to those seven generations thinking what would I thank them for, what would I ask them for, I would thank them for their forbearance. I would thank them for the fact that I've even had the chance to be here. It is absolute fluke that I'm here and that my ancestors are not lying, you know, skeletal in a mass grave in Ireland.

[00:40:39] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, it is absolute fluke that my grandfather was not shot or gassed to death in the first World War, that he survived long enough for him and my grandmother to have my father. It's incredible that my father's tank wasn't the one that was blown up on the first day of action, but it was his best friend's tank next to him that was blown up and that he made it through and got back here and happened to completely randomly bump into my mother.

[00:41:05] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, and then I look at my mother's side, and I think of her father, you know, walking miles to school on his bare feet in the Highlands. And then a generation back and terrible alcoholism and domestic abuse. I look through all these things and they're still unremarkable, my situation. I mean, it's just the same as anybody else's

[00:41:22] Àdhamh Ó Broin: when we look back and see all the trauma and all the horror and all the brutality, you know. And what I would just want to say to those generations, you know, back there, is just, as I said, thank you for your forbearance and thank you for whatever you've put into me that has ultimately got to the point where I'm now able to turn around and look at this and deal with it because I don't want my kids having to deal with it.

[00:41:44] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I mean, they will have to, because I didn't start doing it until they were already on the scene. I probably passed negative things to them as well. But you know, as a parent, you know, you're always just trying to filter. You can't block out all the bad stuff. You just try and sieve as much of the crap out as you can, you know, and only pass on the joy.

[00:42:02] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I mean, that doesn't work, but that's what you're trying to do. So seven generations back. I'm saying thank you. I would love to ask questions about the language, about the dialect, about words. That's the geeky bit coming through. Seven generations into the future. How do I think i'll stand up as a seventh generation ancestor, as somebody sort of what is great, great, great, great grandfather.

[00:42:25] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I simply just hope that i'll be remembered as the generation that turned around started sorting the trauma out. You know, I mean, I'm just a vessel. I have no interest in self-aggrandizement of any kind. I had a minor celebrity when I was working at Outlander. It just didn't suit me at all. I went out of my way to deconstruct that.

[00:42:44] Àdhamh Ó Broin: I just sort of took it to bits, and started ignoring all the opportunities to put myself in the limelight, and I just wanted to push the story in the limelight, when I pushed the lower into the limelight, the language, the culture. I wanted to be an advocate for my people, the Gaelic people. We are an ethnic group.

[00:42:58] Àdhamh Ó Broin: We've been absolutely marginalized and brutalized and thrown onto the front line of every flaming British conflict over the last 250 years. And I hope seven generations on, that the people are looking back on me as an ancestor will hopefully find something of value that I did to try and struggle against all this and try and turn it around and hopefully I wouldn't have been too esoteric in what I've left behind. They will make some sort of sense of it.

[00:43:25] Lesley Anne Rose: Thank you for sharing that. I mean, you shared quite a bit of personal trauma within your family and that's a precious thing to share, so thank you. It strikes me as well, you've mentioned there about that we're the generation that turns things around and of course we've all got a lot of intergenerational trauma.

[00:43:40] Lesley Anne Rose: But also the land itself, the earth itself has got a lot of trauma. So I think kind of our healing is inexplicably intertwined with the healing of the planet as well. And certainly, I mean, I won't even start talking about a wellbeing economy or an economy that puts wellbeing at its heart, but it's clear really that wellbeing for us and for the planet has to be at the heart of, you know, all of our decisions moving forward.

[00:44:04] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Yes. And it also has to not just become one or more commodity. You know, the language is commodified, wellbeings commodified. I mean, you know, we've got to actually value it for its own sake, you know, as for what it actually is and what it potentially provides.

[00:44:18] Lesley Anne Rose: Yeah. No, that's a valuable thing to add. Thank you. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you would like to share or talk about?

[00:44:25] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Just the situation as a tradition bearer with language and culture is absolutely identical to the situation of, you know, an environmental protection worker, a campaigner, whatever.

[00:44:39] Àdhamh Ó Broin: You know, anyone listening who doesn't have much of a connection, but is very, very committed to looking after the land, looking after the sea, looking after the air.

[00:44:48] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Your work you're doing is actually literally identical. You honestly couldn't squeeze a horse hair in between it, it's absolutely identical. And you think, oh, maybe I'm working with more things that are bit more technical, more scientific or more, you know, maybe more sort of physical, practical, you know, ultimately these are all facets of the one thing.

[00:45:07] Àdhamh Ó Broin: There is a living earth, you know, there is a great father creative spirit and there's a receptive mother earth spirit. You know, in whatever faith you have there is probably something similar to that. Everything that exists naturally has come to exist naturally on earth has done so of its own volition.

[00:45:27] Àdhamh Ó Broin: The self-perpetuating, beautiful life force of this world fills up spaces without any rationale or preconception of what it does, but itself perpetuates. And humans, indigenous culture and language came to be in just that same manner. So when the people first came upon the earth, that we know regard as Gaelic, came upon it with a different language, the earth was mute.

[00:45:58] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Other than the sounds of the wind and the birds, the way the earth felt on the feet, the type of rocks that were there, you know, the kind of rain, be it heavy or misty. And through these experiences that the land there gave to the gail, the gail's language changed to reflect that set of experiences.

[00:46:21] Àdhamh Ó Broin: And so the land gifted language to the gail. And so in turn, the gail came to gift language back to the land by describing our experiences and naming the land. And so when you look at the place names, you can see how the land gave language to the gail and how the gail gifted it back to the land. And so the land, environmental protection, we are so dedicated to is a land that has been named and interacted with by indigenous peoples since the beginning of human history.

[00:46:54] Àdhamh Ó Broin: By protecting that land and not having it overrun by forestry or affluent running out the rivers or over fishing. Or you know, no apex predators to deal with deer issues, what all these things that people wanna try and fix, they are returning the natural rhythms in the natural state to the land, and they're therefore making it all the more appropriate ones, more to be described by the language that has been birthed by it.

[00:47:22] Àdhamh Ó Broin: So it's all part of the one living pastiche and we're all working on our little corner. Because sometimes people go, oh you're not really doing all that much with the environmental stuff. You don't do that much practical. I don't see you in marches, I don't see you hanging off boats. Ah. I'm taking care of my little corner of this struggle that most people don't realize is connected, but I hope I have illustrated how it is.

[00:47:45] Lesley Anne Rose: That's a really beautiful last image to take away. You're a natural storyteller. I can hear that. Absolute authentic resonance with people and place in your voice and in the language. It's just beautiful to listen to you. Thank you. I just want to say a huge thank you for your time today. We've touched on so much and I suppose a standout for me about trusting in the wisdom of our bodies and equally trusting in

[00:48:08] Lesley Anne Rose: the knowledge of our ancestors and also the knowledge within the earth itself. And it's as simple as just striking up a conversation and listening and speaking, and spending time with each other. But also the importance of tradition bearers in holding, healing, documenting, and then passing on the stories of communities and how that is the glue that holds communities together and builds community cohesion.

[00:48:34] Lesley Anne Rose: And that's a massive gift that we can leave for future generations. So yeah. Thank you for taking the time for speaking to us and you certainly are one of our brilliant 1000 better stories.

[00:48:46] Àdhamh Ó Broin: Oh yeah, you're most welcome. Ultimately, if in doubt, just get your socks and shoes off. You can't do the hard intensive work if you don't sit quietly and gather the energy and the land will help with that. Gu robh móran math agaibh. It's been a great pleasure. Cheers for now.