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Tag: Romani Gypsies
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Running Away, Walking Off and the Marriage the State Could See
Who decided what was the “real” Gypsy way to get married? Many debates happen online about Gypsy and Traveller culture. And when they do, differences of opinion can become very strong, very quickly. I found the whole “if you use a mop to clean your floors, you’re not a real Gypsy or Traveller” debate fascinating.…
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Gypsy and Traveller History: Slavery, Persecution and Survival
I am currently working through the Proud Gypsy Traveller website, page by page, reviewing what we have written and deciding what needs updating. When I reached our original timeline, I realised how much has changed—not only in the evidence now available, but in my own ability to research it. I now know how to follow…
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This Was Never Just a Scottish Problem, was it?
I’ve been sitting with this for a while now. Like a lot of us, I was brought up hearing bits of things — never the full story. Things half said. Things you don’t ask too many questions about. Things that sit in families but don’t get written down. I’m Romani Gypsy, with Scottish Gypsy ancestry…
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She Who Holds the Crown
A storytelling session for International Women’s Day This International Women’s Day, audiences were invited into a powerful and deeply personal storytelling experience: “She Who Holds the Crown.” The session explored the strength, humour, resilience and quiet authority of Romany Gypsy women — the women who have carried culture, memory and survival through centuries of change,…
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20 February 1856: Abolition Without Accountability
20 February 1856.In the Romanian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, nearly 500 years of enslavement formally ended. Between 1385 and 1856, Romani people were legally treated as property. They were owned by monasteries, noble families and the state. They were sold. They were inherited. They were separated from their children. Their labour sustained estates, institutions…
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Heathcliff Was a Gypsy — and Erasing That Isn’t Radical, It’s Repetition
There is something deeply familiar about the current online narrative surrounding the new Wuthering Heights adaptation. Familiar, because Romani people have seen this move before The argument goes something like this: “Gypsy was a generic term.” Or “He was probably meant to be Black, or generally ‘other’.” Or worse: “The Brontës wouldn’t have really known…
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Rebranded Existence: When the State Criminalises Our Lives but Celebrates Our Idea
Tonight I spent my time writing welfare reports. Not abstract exercises, not box-ticking paperwork, but detailed accounts of how our communities actually live. I wrote about how Gypsy and Traveller communities operate intrinsically: how we form micro-communities grounded in kinship, shared responsibility, reciprocity, and deep connection to place and land. I described how care is…
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Ringlets Of Red
Ringlets of red, Eyes open wide. Headteacher usher’s child inside.The room goes quite 48 eyes on me Be nice to Violet she’s a Gypsy you see.Confused and lost a bewildered child, dying with shame and pain inside. Was my culture of vital importance? When leading a lamb out to slaughter.Somewhere to sit Let’s find you…
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Open Letter to anyone who will help affect change
I remember my first day back at school all too well, we were living roadside, it was the norm for my family back then. We had gone away for a few months and were back for the winter, the memory was scorched on my brain so much that when I was in my early 20’s…