Moving backwards in front - 5th Nov 2009
Posted by John McKenna on Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Under: Crofting
. . . When I'm in the middle of a dream, stay in bed and float upstream . . .
I was sitting by the peat fire recently when I heard some news of February Burns. Some of you may remember him.
outer hebrides crofting-township blackhouse ruin (lower left) and replica iron age house
He believes in white aborginals, too. Formerly holding the Dr. Templeton Blope chair at the University of the Outer Hebrides, Burns feels that the Western fringes of Scotland are perhaps the cradle, or at least one of the cradles, of the pink (and occasionally blue) people. White aborigines who populated those islands for thousands of years: Stone Age hunter-gatherers and Iron-to-Bronge Age fisherfolk/agriculturalists/adventurers who then became peasant farmers or crofters. They were much later hounded off their land because in part their habits and practices (as well as their native tongue) were perceived as primitive in the rapidly modernising world.
I don’t know what to think of that. Except I remember that some American white supremacists misinterpreted the Highland bravado of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart as some signal that Scots were perhaps the master race. (Honestly.) I do like the idea that over the long run of history, the experiences of the Gaels run parallel to of Navaho or Miwok. Indeed, like some Native Americans, they lived on a land that outsiders and visitors deemed a wilderness. I think John Muir was a great man, but he often held the American Indian in scant regard.
great bernera view
Recently E and I picked up a backpacker hitchhiking in some rather nasty weather. A young Israeli trying to clear his head after doing his obligatory military service, he was nearing the end of a six-month sojourn that included China, Italy, France, England, and Wales. He commented that the land here looked ancient, as if dinosaurs might be living in one of the desolate glens. I agree that there is a prehistoric feel to the terrain. But I also had to remind him that this land has been populated, and more densely than today, for a very long time. He was surprised. But in a comment that I wish he would have sent to the local tourist board, he said that his hike earlier that day on Great Bernera was the high point of his half-year’s travelling. Unsolicited praise is always the best, although he may have spoken too soon. We left him at the fork of the road with his heading south for Harris.
Perhaps there was more to come.
I was sitting by the peat fire recently when I heard some news of February Burns. Some of you may remember him.
peat fire
He was the one mixed up in that strange but appealing scheme to “fight fur with fur” back in the late 1980s. Homeless people in the East Village and Lower East Side of NYC were paid to catch rats. Then Burns and some cohorts sewed the pelts into odd bits of garments. Gloves were the least offensive. The shawls were downright appalling. The idea was inspired, if that’s the right word, by the business of raising nutria, a large 15 lbs. rat-like rodent with a proclivity for water, in the Southern US. That was a legitimate venture however ill-conceived (as the nutria ran amok in the bayous) to create a substitute for beaver pelts. Burns’ goal was to put people off all furs. It didn’t work. Splattering celebrities with fake blood proved much more effective. And the whole project went pear-shaped as one of the colleagues turned out to be associated with the guy who cooked up his girlfriend in soups for the homeless. Turns out rat’s livers played a key role in the recipe.
Burns is still involved in that nutty scheme to repatriate Europeans. That’s not how he phrases it, though. Send Europeans Home is the movement's motto. North America, for example, is an occupied country. Any descendents of white settlers (though according to him they’re usually pink and sometimes a haunting hue of blue, too) should go back. I suppose Marcus Garvey is his model. Like some of Burns’ notions, this one walks a fine line in what many would perceive as racist. Should only Europeans "go home"? Should Europe be "home" to only pink folk? But then again, February says we all harbour various shades of racism and bigotry, whether we want to admit it or not. Before Burns left Manhattan for a small and particularly homogeneous northern European nation, the late Tom Timber admonished him: “But that’s a white country.” Burns should have told him, " That's entirely the point." He felt some odd need to go back to where he thought he belonged.
He was the one mixed up in that strange but appealing scheme to “fight fur with fur” back in the late 1980s. Homeless people in the East Village and Lower East Side of NYC were paid to catch rats. Then Burns and some cohorts sewed the pelts into odd bits of garments. Gloves were the least offensive. The shawls were downright appalling. The idea was inspired, if that’s the right word, by the business of raising nutria, a large 15 lbs. rat-like rodent with a proclivity for water, in the Southern US. That was a legitimate venture however ill-conceived (as the nutria ran amok in the bayous) to create a substitute for beaver pelts. Burns’ goal was to put people off all furs. It didn’t work. Splattering celebrities with fake blood proved much more effective. And the whole project went pear-shaped as one of the colleagues turned out to be associated with the guy who cooked up his girlfriend in soups for the homeless. Turns out rat’s livers played a key role in the recipe.
Burns is still involved in that nutty scheme to repatriate Europeans. That’s not how he phrases it, though. Send Europeans Home is the movement's motto. North America, for example, is an occupied country. Any descendents of white settlers (though according to him they’re usually pink and sometimes a haunting hue of blue, too) should go back. I suppose Marcus Garvey is his model. Like some of Burns’ notions, this one walks a fine line in what many would perceive as racist. Should only Europeans "go home"? Should Europe be "home" to only pink folk? But then again, February says we all harbour various shades of racism and bigotry, whether we want to admit it or not. Before Burns left Manhattan for a small and particularly homogeneous northern European nation, the late Tom Timber admonished him: “But that’s a white country.” Burns should have told him, " That's entirely the point." He felt some odd need to go back to where he thought he belonged.
outer hebrides crofting-township blackhouse ruin (lower left) and replica iron age house
He believes in white aborginals, too. Formerly holding the Dr. Templeton Blope chair at the University of the Outer Hebrides, Burns feels that the Western fringes of Scotland are perhaps the cradle, or at least one of the cradles, of the pink (and occasionally blue) people. White aborigines who populated those islands for thousands of years: Stone Age hunter-gatherers and Iron-to-Bronge Age fisherfolk/agriculturalists/adventurers who then became peasant farmers or crofters. They were much later hounded off their land because in part their habits and practices (as well as their native tongue) were perceived as primitive in the rapidly modernising world.
I don’t know what to think of that. Except I remember that some American white supremacists misinterpreted the Highland bravado of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart as some signal that Scots were perhaps the master race. (Honestly.) I do like the idea that over the long run of history, the experiences of the Gaels run parallel to of Navaho or Miwok. Indeed, like some Native Americans, they lived on a land that outsiders and visitors deemed a wilderness. I think John Muir was a great man, but he often held the American Indian in scant regard.
great bernera view
Recently E and I picked up a backpacker hitchhiking in some rather nasty weather. A young Israeli trying to clear his head after doing his obligatory military service, he was nearing the end of a six-month sojourn that included China, Italy, France, England, and Wales. He commented that the land here looked ancient, as if dinosaurs might be living in one of the desolate glens. I agree that there is a prehistoric feel to the terrain. But I also had to remind him that this land has been populated, and more densely than today, for a very long time. He was surprised. But in a comment that I wish he would have sent to the local tourist board, he said that his hike earlier that day on Great Bernera was the high point of his half-year’s travelling. Unsolicited praise is always the best, although he may have spoken too soon. We left him at the fork of the road with his heading south for Harris.
Perhaps there was more to come.
In : Crofting
Tags: white aborigines rats blackhouse
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Barry Shelby, American-gone-native-Scotsperson, Journalist , Photographer, Author and....Crofter located now at Earshader on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Barry, based for years in Glasgow, is now with his wife Elizabeth on the Islands off the North-West Coast of Scotland.
