With it being New Years Day, lots of folks today are playing Auld Lang Syne, easily Scotland's most recognizable folk tune. Few know that Burns is said to have transcribed our modern version from a Romanichal gentleman he heard singing it likely down near Hawick on the Scottish borders!

With that in mind, I wanted to take a moment to share this video by Davie Donaldson highlighting Scottish Romanichal struggles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30p57KvngYQ

I want to specifically highlight and uplift the Scottish Romani, as this is the group I have blood in common with, though discrimination is widespread across Europe and the Americas, which is a shame considering the Scottish Romanichal contributions to the country's history, culture, music, and their unique connection to the land. Despite this, their unique localized dialect, Scottish Cant, only has approximately 500 speakers left, and they often find themselves at the end of particularly cruel and unusual discrimination, including the Scottish equivalent of CPS having regularly taken Romanichal and Traveller children from their families for decades without legal grounds, purely on the basis of ethnic background, up until shockingly recent.

Many in the UK especially find themselves unable to avoid being recognized as Roma, leading them to be refused from public spaces and restaurants, with others who are more white-passing being afraid to be open about their cultural heritage. Nowadays they regularly find themselves placed on the outskirts of society in poor housing conditions. Prejudice against the Romani is amongst the single most-normalized forms of racism in Europe, but especially in the wider UK as their numbers dwindle to nearly nothing.

To help financially and build awareness, I definitely recommend checking out The Traveller Movement travellermovement.org.uk and worldwide at www.voiceofroma.com. I'll post better links as I find them.

#Romani #Romanichal #ScotsRoma #Romany #Scotland #auldlangsyne

I am not requesting assistance proving I personally have Romanichal ancestry. That's been proven entirely, including a mix of Pakistani, Armenian, and Indian dna, plus dna matches with current Scottish Romanichal who have people from my tree in theirs.

But that's not the controversy, nor where I need help. Admixtures generally suggest about an 11-19% mix of non-european romani ethnic indicators. This puts the last Romanichal person as having to have likely been my great-grandmother, who we called Nan/Nanny, or her daughter who we called Gran.

Im fully willing to accept this as the case. But outside of DNA, we have little proof of this, and as such, a couple family members outright refuse to acknowledge it.

So I need someone who is familiar enough with Romanichal culture to help prove my proof is proof, and to help me find more if possible. But as the family to be researched is a prominent pioneer family in Ontario who had every reason to keep this quiet and I'm very privacy-focused myself, I'm not including the surname in the post.

Any help at all is welcome!

#Romanichal #Romani #Romany #Roxburgshire #Scotland #Ontario #Canada #geneology

Just discovered a Scottish-Romani man on Tiktok named Dean Rheims who is trying to make #GRTFuturism a thing. It started off with his story of a vardo spaceship, and now I have
SO.
MANY.
IDEAS.

Im in my sci-fi arc, folks. There's so much you can do with this.

#Romani #Romanichal #Futurism #Scifi

Cultural question.

The story I am writing has developed to incorporate #Roma / #Romani / #Romany / #Romanichal / #Gypsy elements.
Obviously I want to do it in a culturally sensitive way. Is it wrong to include elements of #magic?
Kind of stereotypical, but is it offensive?
#NaNoWriMo