Southern Celts
Drawing on her own family experience and insights from her own research, Celine Kearney travelled around Aotearoa interviewing New Zealanders with Scottish and Irish backgrounds.
Southern Celts uses autoethnography and narrative to explore how these New Zealanders live out their cultural connections to their Irish and Scottish backgrounds.
Diverse narratives
Interviews cross hemispheres and generations as well as geographic and cultural communities.
They reflect the passage of time which brings constant change.
Southern Celts is a collection of interviews of New Zealanders who reflect on their connections to their Irish and Scottish cultural backgrounds.
These narratives of individuals and families cover a range of related issues, including:
- doing business
- speaking and teaching Scottish and Irish Gaelic
- playing music and singing
- writing fiction and poetry
- making documentaries
- carving and sculpture
- spirituality and religion
- sport.
There are also historical narratives of the Scots and Irish in public institutions.
Shared understanding
Narrators reflect on their understanding of how people with Scottish and Irish backgrounds have related to indigenous Māori over the generations in Aotearoa.
As we look to teach more of our own New Zealand histories in schools, these personal narratives offer rich insights for the way ahead.