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Dùthchas is a millennia-old Gaelic kincentric concept. The word exists both as Dùthchas in Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) and as Dúchas in Gaeilge (Irish). Dùthchas is an intrinsic part of the sealladh a’ Ghàidheil (Gaelic worldview) and is derived from the Gaelic word “dú/dùth”, meaning “earth” or “land”. 

Dùthchas can have several meanings, both internal and external dimensions, such as: hereditary right or claim, birthright, heritage, native or ancestral home, kindred affection, or innate quality (McQuillan, 2004). 

Dùthchas stresses the interconnectedness of people, land, culture, and an ecological balance among all entities, human and more than human (Meighan, 2022). 

Dùthchas has guided Gaels and informed their practices and ways of life for centuries in the Gàidhealtachd (Gaeldom, also known as the Highlands and Islands of Scotland). The cultural force of Dùthchas was widespread and central to Gaelic clan cohesion since it “was evidently a system of customary law or native title associated with traditional clan society and collective rights” (MacKinnon, 2018, p. 284). The “heritable trusteeship” of land (Macinnes, 2006), encoded and transmitted through Dùthchas, affirmed dynamic and complex kin-based and place-based relationships that bonded people, extended kin, and community together beyond biological ties alone (Newton, 2019). 

Dùthchas, being a conceptual tool that has guided Gaels to co-exist in harmony with, and in relation to their local environment over millennia, can support the present-day (re)centring of place-based knowledges to foster more sustainable futures. Dùthchas has underpinned the lifeways and lifestyles of “exemplary ethical communities” in the Gàidhealtachd with “a proven track record of sustainability related to forms of traditional knowledge” (Conversi, 2021, p. 1). For example, my mother's home island, South Uist, is a Key Biodiversity Area where you can find the Machair, a habitat unique to the north-west of Scotland and Ireland. Gaels and locals, such as crofters, have tended the Machair in a way that nurtures life. Machair is a Gaelic word and can be translated as “fertile, low-lying plain”. 

According to Nature Scotland,

“More than a habitat, machair is a blend of low-lying coastline; sand partly consisting of shell fragments; the effects of strong winds; just the right amount of rainfall; and the involvement of people and their grazing animals…the [local] human population manages the land in a way that delivers high biodiversity” (para. 2, 9).

Dùthchas demonstrates that belonging to a place is not the same as possessing or owning a place or land in dominant western and capitalist worldviews. Dùthchas "transmits a sense of belonging to, not possession of the land, and stresses an interconnectedness and ecological balance among all entities" (Chiblow & Meighan, 2023, p. 2). The root word in Gàidhlig “dú/dùth”—which originates both Dùthchas and duine (person, or one who comes from the land)—illustrates that, in the Gaelic worldview, we come from the land, we belong to the land, and language is land. An Indigenous language, in this case, Gàidhlig, is an ancestral guide, map, and ecological encyclopedia. The Gàidhlig expression encapsulates this sentiment: “Tìr gun canan, tìr gun anam” (Land without language, land without soul).

Dùthchas goes beyond a mere feeling of identification with place and community to tangible conduct and action motivated by a sense of ethics, respect, and responsibility for said place and community to maintain ecological balance (Meighan, 2022).

During the Highland Clearances, the Gaelic tenantry, the Tuath, were forcefully evicted from their traditional territories for sheep monoculture and commercialization of the lands by landowning gentry, many of whom were Gael landlords who had been co-opted and acculturated into the British colonial and imperial regime. In one case, in 1756, the Tuath of Coigach, in the north-west of the Gàidhealtachd, protested the commercialization and harmful sheep monoculture by invoking their còir (right) and their Dùthchas (heritable trusteeship). Col Gordon (2023) remarks,

Throughout the Highland Clearances, Gaels felt that this hereditary right of Dùthchas was being violated. Then throughout the Land Wars of the 1880s it was in defence of this feeling, or customary law, that people were acting, and which later led, in 1886, to the formation of the Crofting Laws, which can be seen in many ways as both a treaty and an acknowledgement of a form of native title. (para. 10)

More recently, there has been a surge of interest in the concept of Dùthchas in Scotland as reconstitutive practice. There is a recent documentary titled Dùthchas (Home), directed by Kirsty MacDonald and Andy Mackinnon. The documentary explores what it means to people, especially women, after they had to leave the island of their birth, in this case, Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. Many had to leave the islands to get an education, work, and live, such as my own grandparents and mother. The Dùthchas documentary explores the effect migration has had on the Gaelic language and culture. 

And, as part of my doctoral research, I operationalized Dùthchas as a kincentric qualitative methodology for community-led research in-relation praxis to explore how researchers who are not Indigenous to the lands on which they work can collaborate in a more ethical and mutually beneficial manner with Indigenous Peoples and communities (Meighan, 2023). 

Dùthchas and the “energy of belonging and responsibility the word conveys [also] extends to the waters” (MacKinnon and Brennan, 2012, p. 9). This responsibility for, and intimate knowledge of local waters was recently highlighted with widespread media attention to the lifeways of Gaelic coastal communities if Scottish Government plans for Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) were to go ahead. The proposed HPMAs would mean vast areas of coastal and inshore waters would be closed to all fishing, aquaculture, and infrastructure developments. Island and coastal communities would be devastated as centuries-old, traditional sustainable fishing activities and industries would be forced to close, likely resulting in economic, social, and cultural devastation. Angus MacPhail, who is co-founder of the traditional Scottish band from the Gàidhealtachd—Skippinish—and who is also a fisherman, teamed up with inshore fisherman, Donald Francis MacNeil, to write The Clearances Again, reaching the Top 10 in the UK music charts in April 2023. 

In November 2023, in response to findings from a government consultation and to mounting pressure from local fishing and coastal communities and groups such as Skippinish, the proposed HPMA plans were scrapped. These movements further demonstrate the cultural force of Dùthchas and illustrate how Dùthchas continues to drive action to protect the local communities who know their lands and waters best.

Dùthchas is not monolithic, static, parochial, nor inward-looking. It is inclusive, fluid, with an eye to the future, sustainable communities, and generations to come.

You can read more about Dùthchas in this open-access article.

References

Chiblow, S., & Meighan, P. J. (2023). Anishinaabek Giikendaaswin and Dùthchas nan Gàidheal: concepts to (re)center place-based knowledges, governance, and land in times of crisis. Ethnicities, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968231219022

Conversi, D. (2021). Exemplary ethical communities: a new concept for a livable anthropocene. Sustainability, 13(10): 5582. 

MacInnes, J. (2006). In Newton (M. (Ed.), Dùthchas Nan Gàidheal—Collected essays of John MacInnes. Birlinn General.

MacKinnon, I. (2018). ‘Decommonising the mind’: Historical impacts of British imperialism on indigenous tenure systems and self-understanding in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. International Journal of the Commons, 12(1), 278–300. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.814

MacKinnon I., & Brennan R. (2012). Dùthchas Na mara/belonging to the sea: Exploring the cultural roots of maritime conflict on gaelic speaking islands in Scotland and Ireland. Eirinn is Alba/SAMS/Scottish Crofting Federation.

McQuillan, P. (2004). Native and natural: Aspects of the concepts of “right” and “freedom” in Irish. University of Notre Dame Press.

Meighan, P. J. (2022). Dùthchas, a Scottish Gaelic methodology to guide self-decolonization and conceptualize a kincentric and relational approach to community-led research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221142451 

Meighan, P. J. (2023). What is language for us? The role of relational technology, strength-based language education, and community-led language planning and policy research to support Indigenous language revitalization and cultural reclamation processes. Doctoral Dissertation. McGill University.

Newton M. S. (2019). Warriors of the word: The world of the Scottish highlanders. VLE Books.