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Tag: Scottish Gypsy Travellers
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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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The Tinker Experiment: Why Did It Happen, What Happened—and Why Should We All Know About It?
For generations, Scottish Gypsy Travellers were pushed from the road, separated from their children and placed in isolated, substandard settlements. This is not only a story about the past. Its consequences are still being lived today. By Violet Cannon, Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC A man appeared to have wandered into the exhibition almost by accident.…
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An Apology Is Just the First Step
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…
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Nackens Now and Then: The History Scotland Tried to Hide
Art, archives, war heroes and a family refusing to be forgotten On Friday 26 June, I attended Nackens Now and Then at Killiecrankie Village Hall, near Pitlochry. David McPhee, a member of Perth and Kinross Council staff—and, as far as we are aware, no direct relation to Shamus and Roseanna McPhee—opened the event to a standing-room-only audience.…
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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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No Man’s Land” — and the Stories We Were Told
I was told my whole life that I was English. English Gypsy. It wasn’t said harshly. It wasn’t said defensively. It was simply offered as fact, the way families hand down recipes or habits or certain turns of phrase. It was part of who we were. We were English. And yet, there were the trips…
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Did We Give You the Kilt and Bagpipes, and In Return You Gave Us Intergenerational Trauma?
Did we give you the kilt and the bagpipe, and in return you gave us silence ? This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a reckoning. For generations, Scottish Gypsy/Travellers were persecuted not only through public disdain but through deliberate, state-backed efforts to erase who we are. In March 2025, the Scottish Government finally admitted it: what…