What happens after Scotland says sorry for the Tinker Experiment?
The Nackens Now and Then event took place almost exactly one year after the Scottish Government formally apologised for the policies and practices commonly referred to as the Tinker Experiment.
Professor Ali Watson OBE, Director of the Third Generation Project at the University of St Andrews and lead author of the archival research, reminded us that the apology had been delivered one year and one day earlier.
But she then asked the question that matters:
What happens after the apology?
As Professor Watson said:
“An apology is just the first step.”
An apology can acknowledge wrongdoing. It can create a moment of national recognition. It can give survivors and families words they have fought for over many years.
But an apology does not, by itself, repair the damage.
It does not return children to the families from whom they were taken. It does not restore missing records, recover erased identities or undo the intergenerational effects of segregation, forced settlement and cultural destruction.
It does not improve present-day living conditions.
And it does not absolve the institutions involved from taking further action.
Research of national importance—carried out through unpaid labour
Professor Watson explained that eight people had worked on the research into the Tinker Experiment.
The research team examined hundreds of official documents and travelled to archives across Scotland. They looked at the actions of government departments, local authorities, churches, charities, police and other institutions.
Yet work of this scale and national importance was not properly resourced.
One of the statements I wrote down from Professor Watson’s contribution was:
“Really, what we tried to do—we knew that we would have to work for free. More money should have been available to do work of this size and importance.”
That should concern all of us.
The Scottish Government commissioned research into policies involving forced settlement, segregated education, child removal, overseas adoption and the attempted destruction of a culture—yet the researchers undertaking that work knew they would have to contribute significant unpaid labour.
The same pattern appeared throughout the event: vital work being completed through determination, goodwill and personal sacrifice rather than through adequate resources.
Professor Watson was also clear that the published report represented only a small part of what remains to be discovered:
“Although we were getting very clear samples across Scotland, we reached only a tiny percentage of what is out there. There is far more still to find out.”
That is important.
The report is not the final history of the Tinker Experiment. It is the beginning of an investigation into something much larger.
Not a few huts in Perthshire
Roseanna McPhee made the same point in her own words:
“The Tinker Experiment was not just a few huts in Perthshire. It was much wider.”
The research found evidence of forced or discriminatory housing policies in 27 of Scotland’s 32 present-day local authority areas.
As Professor Watson explained:
“This was not geographically limited.”
The buildings differed from place to place. Some families were placed in wooden huts, others in camps, caravans, disused military accommodation or isolated housing schemes.
But the accommodation was repeatedly substandard, and the intention remained similar.
“The buildings were different—substandard buildings always—but the same outcome: a constant ghetto.”
These settlements were not simply an attempt to provide housing. Families were placed away from wider society, watched and expected to abandon travelling, traditional work, language, relationships and cultural practices.
The roots of this approach extended much further back than the experimental settlements of the 1940s and 1950s. The research identified earlier assimilation projects, including Kirk Yetholm, which involved the Church of Scotland during the nineteenth century.
When the evidence from the Borders, the Highlands, the islands and other parts of Scotland is considered, it becomes impossible to describe the Tinker Experiment as a small or localised project.
It was part of a much wider system of policy, belief and institutional behaviour.
When “child welfare” becomes a weapon
The treatment of children repeatedly appeared within the research.
Policies were presented as being connected to education, protection and child welfare. But the records show how the language of welfare could be used to justify separating children from their families and culture.
Traveller parents were judged against settled expectations. Their way of living could be treated as evidence that their children were neglected, even where families were being denied lawful stopping places, suitable housing and access to services.
Children were placed in segregated schools. Others were removed into temporary care, industrial schools or permanent adoption, including adoption overseas.
Professor Watson drew parallels between what happened in Scotland and what happened to Indigenous and minority communities elsewhere.
She and Dr Bennett Collins had examined related histories in Canada and the United States. The similarities were difficult to ignore: forced settlement, child removal, institutional control and attempts to disconnect children from their family, language and identity.
Yet these connections are still not widely recognised.
The records of child migration were particularly difficult to trace. Records were incomplete, identities were not always noted and community background could disappear from official files.
Professor Watson ended this section with a question:
“What is the easiest way of getting rid of someone’s identity? You don’t record it.”
That line hurt my heart.
For those of us searching for our ancestors and trying to piece together what was deliberately hidden, those words land heavily.
The gaps in the archives are not empty spaces. They represent real people, families and identities that someone decided were not worth recording.
A person can be removed from their family, placed somewhere else and given a different story. If their identity is not written down, future generations may never know where they came from.
Erasure does not always require the destruction of a record.
Sometimes, it is achieved by never making the record in the first place.
“People must have access to their own history”
Paula, an archive manager who supported Shamus and Roseanna at RAJPOT in developing a knowledge base, summarised what is needed:
“People must have access to their own history.”
This must be central to whatever happens next.
Community members should not have to fight institutions individually for access to records about their own parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.
Archives should not be treated as the property of the organisations that created the injustice.
There must be properly funded, community-led work to identify, preserve and make records accessible. Families must be supported to trace relatives, recover names and record oral histories while elders are still able to share them.
This work must be carried out with care. For many families, discovering the truth may bring answers, but it may also uncover removal, abuse, institutionalisation, forced adoption and deaths that were never properly explained.
Access to history must therefore come with emotional, practical and specialist support.
A lesson from Taos Pueblo
One of the most powerful parts of the event was the international solidarity shown by people who had travelled from the United States.
Sunshine Duran of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico spoke about the long struggle for the return of Blue Lake and its surrounding ancestral land.
Blue Lake is sacred to the people of Taos Pueblo. The US Government took the lake and approximately 48,000 acres of surrounding land in 1906.
The people of Taos Pueblo fought for decades to have it returned.
Sunshine described their victory as one of the first major modern examples of an Indigenous people successfully reclaiming land taken by the federal government.
Taos Pueblo also holds an important place in the history of resistance to Spanish colonial rule. It was central to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, one of the most successful Indigenous uprisings against colonial power in North American history.
Sunshine gave us one particularly powerful line:
“Only the warriors are left standing.”
After generations of resistance, President Richard Nixon signed Public Law 91-550 in 1970, returning Blue Lake and approximately 48,000 acres of land to Taos Pueblo.
Sunshine told us that the returned land included all but one of their sacred sites.
Holly, speaking from Making Rights Real, placed the return of Blue Lake within the wider development of Indigenous self-determination and self-governance.
The return did not erase what had happened. But it went beyond an expression of regret.
Land was returned.
Rights were restored.
Power shifted back towards the people from whom it had been taken.
The return of Blue Lake helped to establish an important precedent for Indigenous self-determination. That wider change in federal policy was strengthened through the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, now regarded as a cornerstone of modern federal Indian law.
We then watched The Return of Blue Lake, a film used as a teaching resource to pass that history to future generations.
The relevance to Scotland was clear.
Taos Pueblo showed that meaningful justice requires more than an apology. It requires the return of rights, resources and control.
Where was the local support?
People had travelled from America in a show of solidarity and support.
Historians, researchers, archivists and human rights advocates had come together. A standing-room-only audience listened to the history of families whose experiences had been hidden for generations.
Where were the posters across Pitlochry?
Yet I could not help wondering where the wider local support had been.
Roseanna told me that she had tried to put posters up and that they had been removed. I do not know who removed them or why, but an event of this importance should have been visible throughout the town.
Where was the practical support to help this brother-and-sister team promote the exhibition on social media?
Where was the publicity from the institutions now expressing regret about what happened?
Where were the resources to help transport, display, catalogue and preserve the material?
Shamus and Roseanna should not have to carry this alone.
An exhibition containing official documents, national research, family testimony, artwork and the histories of Scottish Gypsy Traveller war heroes should not depend almost entirely on the unpaid labour of the people whose family was harmed.
If institutions believe this history matters, they must help people tell it.
What should happen after the apology?
The Scottish Government’s apology was significant. Many families fought for years to secure it, and that achievement should not be diminished.
But the apology cannot become the conclusion.
It must be the beginning of a process that includes truth, access to records, reparations and practical change.
Research must be properly funded and led in genuine partnership with Gypsy Traveller communities.
Survivors and descendants must be supported to trace family histories and access records.
Oral histories must be recorded before more elders and first-hand witnesses are lost.
The histories of the Tinker Experiment, forced settlement and child removal must be taught in Scottish schools.
Institutions involved—including government, councils, churches, charities and police—must examine their own archives and acknowledge their own roles.
The present-day living conditions of affected families must be addressed. It is not enough to apologise for placing people in deliberately substandard accommodation while descendants remain living on neglected and marginalised sites.
And there must be a serious, community-led conversation about reparations.
Reparations are not only financial. They can include land, secure and culturally appropriate accommodation, access to archives, memorials, education, health and trauma support, investment in community-led organisations and guarantees that the same patterns will not continue under different names.
More than just words
At the beginning of the event, David McPhee said:
“We need more than just words.”
By the end of the day, those words carried even greater weight.
The families affected by the Tinker Experiment have already given their testimony. Researchers have found the official documents. The evidence now exists across archives, reports, photographs and living memory.
Scotland can no longer claim that it did not know.
The question is whether the apology will lead to action—or whether the burden will once again be left with people like Shamus and Roseanna to preserve the evidence, educate the public and fight for change without the resources they deserve.
An apology matters.
But an apology is only the first step.
Now Scotland must decide whether it is willing to take the next one.
