Over to Knoydart

Day Three: Crossing to Knoydart

Three eagles circled above us after we’d packed tents and belongings, kitchen and shelter, filled in the shit pit and packed away the toilet tent. We watched them as we formed a ragged circle before walking down to Armadale. 

At the jetty, the man guiding passengers onto the CalMac ferry responded by asking whether there’s enough land for 8 billion people? He concluded the problem is that the lands been taken from the many by the few. He’s worked in Norway and said land ownership is utterly different there to here. He cheered us on as we boarded. 

The ferry was big but the sea was surprisingly huge, waves battering, people holding to handrails, car alarms going off. Then in the distance towards Knoydart something leaping out of the white surf of waves breaking in themselves. More leaping and the conclusion was Minke whales. 

Arriving Mallaig we got all our kit to the much smaller Western Isles boat for Inverie on Knoydart. Andy had had to drive round over the Skye bridge but reached us on time. Arriving Inverie, we walked a mile to the camping field tucked in under the mountains at the edge of the ocean.  

While David, Ele and Rachel cooked up a venison and vegan meal for 60, and with Eva having vanished into a nasty fever and flu, we gathered in the community hall for a hastily cobbled together meeting.  Our numbers have doubled from the two dozen walking across Skye (many of whom will leave the walk here), with new arrivals intending to walk, folk from Torry come to share their play, plus a smattering of folk from Knoydart. We break into small groups where the newly arrived can hear the experience of folks who’ve been walking. 

Later, the Craigallion fire play and the Torry play take centre stage with the Fire Play as a call to action, to reclaiming society and the land, a call from those who have gone before us from (what is now) myth to recent history.

The Torry Play is told by the 9 folk who’ve joined us from Torry, sitting semi-circle before us, and uplifting the voices of the people in the here and now who are suffering from endlessly being dumped on (incinerators etc) and what they have being taken away (for example Nigg Bay for an industrial harbour, the park for the oil industry masquerading as a green transition, and homes because of RAC).

Bruce and Nick have semi-joined us to help cary our kit by boat to our next destination, and their fiddle, accordian and guitar fill the Old Forge, as some of us head for the tents. 

Day Four: Inverie, Knoydart 

Morning and the customary delicious porridge, a morning of potato harvesting at the community farm or what you like, and then a lunch of venison or vegan fare from the meal the night before. 

Then a two-part Assembly. 

The first for everyone to reflect, to listen and to respond. The second for those wanting to walk out of Knoydart to hold hard discussions on how challenging it would be given the weather and the route, and to decide whether and how to go, and how much of what to carry. 

ASSEMBLY Part One - True Stories

The first part of the Assembly began by giving us space in silence to reflect and write down why we’re walking. 

This was what I wrote:

“I am walking for butterflies and wales, for moss and trees, for small children and folks with hands wizened by the breeze. I’m walking out of love, and into a world gone mad, where the domination system’s wrecking ball smashes through places where beings, including people live, and through hearts that try to hold what’s happening. 

“I’m walking for land justice, for fighting against the forces that have torn peoples from the land, but even more for land belonging, for the recovery of the deep connection we have with each other and all beings

“I’m walking more from gratitude and grief than from anger and fight 

“Fight I will when needs must,

but dance I will when chance can”

Then some shared their reflections in the big group of maybe 50 folk, and there was a wider grounding and echoing and diversity as folk responded to each other. 

The second part of the Assembly involved hearing the story of people being forced from their lands in Scotland and sent by Empire to other parts of the world, and then the story of how that Empire ravaged the rest of the world. All of this being told while the land grab and human annihilation in Gaza continues. WE heard from Layla from Knoydart, with her shock of Blue hair, told about the 1800s Clearances at Knoydart that forced people to leave for Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and we heard from Wapat from so-called British Colombia in so-called Canada about the attempted genocide of his peoples by the British, including by ordinary Scots.  

KNOYDART:

Layla tells the story of Knoydart:

People were evicted from here to Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Around 1,800 off the 2,000 people living here were forced from their land. They came in the dead of night to take people, and tore down their homes

200 people - 11 families stayed - because they were too ill to leave. Alexander MacDonald was one of those being evicted - the factors tore down his home. He had to borrow among rocks and in caves to live. For 3 days his wife lay ill beside a bush, and had a miscarriage. Children were terrified. 

The parallel is with in real time Palestine. How can we allow this to happen.? We had a Palestinian solidarity march here. We had opposing views [later clarified as: one person objected]. You may have opposing views, their lived experience has led them to where they are, can we truly blame them for their views based on news they’d seen?

In community you have to get along with everyone. You need to be an individual who wants the best for others. 

We look after the land and each other as best we can. Trying to be disconnected from this capitalistic isociety. 

Question for Layla: “If people are buying property, what’s to stop them selling on?”

Layla: “The Knoydart Foundation has the right of first refusal. If the Foundation don’t want to buy it then they get a proportion of the sale. You build your home, but it’s the community that the home is for.”

Ben: “Community don’t have veto on who you sell to on the open market. But we all have to be consulted so we can stop people building something that’s not a home.”

Layla: “You can see the second highland clearances happening on Skye and all over. The people who are native to the land are not able to buy it. No one ion Knoydart now is from Knoydart originally. The first clearances were successful. The next aer ongoing.”

Layla: “I heard about indigenous leaders coming to Scotland from Peru [Wampis territorial government people] and said to people on Eigg that they were astonished that “Your land is purchased from other people? And you have to buy it from them?” Then they started advocating for the Scottish People with the Scottish Government.”

Lynne from Torry says: “What is happening In Torry, where 500 homies, 10% of Torry, are being threatened with being knocked down, is a reflection of what happened to people here.”

BELLA COOLA:

Wapat has come from Bella Coola, on the coast of so-called British Colombia, and is invited to share what he would like of the story of his people.

As he gets ready he reflects on what he’s heard and says something about how taking care of the land is also all about making sure there are resources for future generations 

He says he is nervous speaking in public, He takes his shoes of, and may of us then do too, and he takes his glasses off the better to not see the circle of 50 people siting around his in the community hall. Then Wapot gets up and starts moving around the circle, looking ahead rather than at anybody.

It is the beginning of ceremony. 

Alec, from Portree on Skye, who is filming the walk, asks if he can walk backwards in front of Wapit as he circles and speaks. Wapiti agrees. (For those of us who didn’t know about Alex and Wapat’s deeper discussions it might have seemed intrusive, but it is actually Wapiti talking to and through the ally that walks backwards ahead of him). 

He talks of the 4 catastrophes of the second era. One of which was smallpox that started in his community at Bela Coola on July 5th 1862. The colonists brought someone with smallpox up from San Fransisco and he popped out and shook hands with everyone, and in this way smallpox was deliberately spread in Bella Coola. One of the 4 regions of his people’s territory had 15,000 people, the other three something similar. After smallpox there were only 200 people left, and they were put in reservations. The attempt to completely wipe out Wapat’s people was almost successful.

More recently there was the taking of the children. From the 1950s to the 1970s the attitude was that:“the Indians can learn to read and write but if he is still in his society he will carry on being Indian”.  The residential schools were about taking  children from their parents and beating the culture out of the people. “Kill the indian, save the man” was the appalling attitude. 

“We weren’t allowed to practice our culture. It’s wild to hear the similarities in terms of what colonisation has done here in Scotland.

“Land back doesn’t just mean physically, it means all these things connected to it. We have a stack of ceremonies. Each dance or ceremony represented what we want to hold close. 

“Nazi Germany got the final solution idea from Johnny MacDonald who is on our $10 bills. It came from how the Indians were treated in the west. The last residential school closed in 1996. I was born in 1995

“I couldn’t go and take someone else’s land. We’ve rights and responsibilities, name and ceremonies, for our land not someone else’s 

“Why would some bears stay secluded to some areas and other bars stay in other areas? The map of where bears are is related to which human communities are there.

“We were there before the cedar trees. We evolved alongside them”

Wapat ends with soundings, huge roars from his people. I am worried that Dqmian’s small baby who has joined us will be frightened when Wapat pre-warns us that it will be loud. The baby is totally at home with the sounding. It is true.

In the discussion afterwards Wapat says that successful revolution requires violence. This is received with a sense off its truth and one response is that maybe in that context violence is more about containing the violence of colonialism and not reproducing it? Someone points out that a Johnny McDonnell statue put up 10 years ago near Aviemore despite the kn own history of his role in genocide.. He was an ordinary guy. Loads of colonists were (we can’t say “It wasnae us”). We were both colonised and colonisers. We need the trauma lens. 

How to contain violence? Whether to be willing to use it to contain it, given how violent the system is? How not to reproduce the system in how we respond to it?

ASSEMBLY Part Two - Planning the walk out

Folk who aren’t going to be walking out of Knoydart leave and about two dozen, of us remain. Those familiar with the mountains are clear about the dangers, the need to be well prepared, the need to not walk if you don’t feel up to it. But we are not just a walking group, we are walking with a purpose and wanting to include those who would not otherwise be able to walk it. That’s why we’ve asked Bruce to bring is boat to ferry most of our kit to Sourlies Bothy, the next day’s destination.

We need to arrive by about 4.30pm so that we can get round the headland before the high tide at 6.30pm. The high tide is good for enabling Bruce’s small tender to bring the kit from his sibling boat to the shore, but not so good for us being able to get round the headland after walking high high up from the sea level where we are at Inverie, then over the pass and down to the sea level we’ll be at at Sourlies Bothy.

Some decide not to walk, but to stay a night or two at Inverie, and then join us at Strathan by van, the night after we will be walking out from Sourlies Bothy. 

For some it is an evening of a sauna by the sea and a singing circle in the hall. For others it’s time to themselves. 

Walking back to the camping field, we are under the finally arrived stars that declare the sky free of rain:

stars make the night 

a never lasting darkness 

darkness 

is the distance 

to stars that are out of sight