Michael Collins is a member of the Traveller community and works as a men’s health worker at Dublin’s Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, helping to promote positive mental health among Traveller men.
He also has an avid interest in family history. So when the idea emerged for a project that involved delving into his community’s past, to trace individual Traveller family trees, he was all over it.
Travellers have always handed down information, all kept in their heads. But when they die, it goes with them
The idea for what eventually became Pavee Roads Home came from the popular television show Who do You Think You Are?, explains Collins, who works with young men aged between 18 and 25.
“They were saying that they did not know where their family came from. We’re told ‘the side of the road’, but where, what county? So I thought this would be a good project to get involved in and I wanted to learn how to do the research,” he says.
As well as working with a genealogist to plot the family tree of three Dublin-based Traveller families, the project captured and recorded first-hand testimonies from older Travellers about their traditionally nomadic way of life.
“Travellers have always handed down information, all kept in their heads. But when they die, it goes with them, so we documented everything,” he says.
The knowledge that emerged from the three family tree projects was fascinating, including the fact that all three had relatives who were members of the Connaught Rangers. “None of us knew that. These men had fought for their country, and some of them died,” says Collins.
In 2019 the Traveller-researched family histories were donated to the National Library of Ireland.
“We were delighted to support this project that provides such valuable insights into Traveller history and identity. The library will store the family histories for posterity,” says its director, Sandra Collins.
Diverse Irish experience
The National Library provides a family history research service and holds many archives of family histories. “This piece of Irish Traveller history is an important addition to those archives and I hope this project and its presence in the library’s archive will encourage other Traveller families to engage the resources available at the National Library and research their own family histories,” she says.
“As Ireland’s memory-keeper, we are committed to ensuring that the National Library’s collections reflect the diversity of Irish experience. The National Library is for everyone and we want to reflect the experience and history of every community.”
If we don't do things like this our heritage is likely to be lost and we are all the poorer
Equally, the Heritage Council has always felt that heritage is not just about castles, tombs and big houses, but about how communities relate to heritage and use it to explore and express their identities, says Ian Doyle, head of conservation at the council.
“Heritage practice has also changed in recent years, with a far greater awareness internationally of the variety of heritage,” he adds. “Several years ago we refreshed our Community Heritage Grants scheme saying we were interested in surveys and recordings of Traveller heritage and the heritage of minority groups. In doing this we were thinking of the rich material culture and intangible heritage of Traveller people in Ireland.”
Ireland’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage includes the Cant/Gammon language and Traveller tin smithing as key elements of Ireland’s intangible heritage, he points out.
“Projects like the Pavee Roads Home project show the importance of transmitting heritage knowledge across generations, if we don’t do things like this our heritage is likely to be lost and we are all the poorer,” says Doyle.
Pavee Roads Home is also a good example of the way in which Dublin City Council Culture Company operates, making introductions and bringing parties together, such as the Traveller men’s group and the National Library of Ireland.
It was supported by the National Neighbourhood, a Dublin City Council Culture Company programme. Maynooth Geography and the Irish Research Council are also providing ongoing support.
“We don’t just bring money, it’s a way of working,” explains the culture company’s chief executive, Iseult Byrne. “We build projects in such a way that we become redundant, and those involved can carry them on themselves if they want to. This is a really good flagship for the process.”
Gap in records
One of the connections made by the company was between the Traveller men’s health group and Prof Karen Till, a cultural geographer from Maynooth University, who runs its Master’s programme in spatial justice.
Spatial justice, and injustice, examines how unfairness is built into the fabric of society geographically.
“In Ireland, there are very few material traces in official records of Traveller histories and geographies, such as in the census and the ordnance survey, despite the fact that Travellers are an historically rich and important ethnic group. This is not an accidental gap,” says Prof Till.
“The lack of official records, of classifying people as existing outside of ‘normal’ society or not documenting their ways of life, is evidence of a larger form of systemic structural racism and discrimination. Under colonialism, so-called ‘civilised’ human society was assumed to be settled, economies based on improving agriculture lands and organised according to property ownership. This mindset existed during colonialism, was carried over to the Irish Free State and continues to this day.”
Maynooth Geography partnered with Pavee Roads Home to develop an online digital StoryMap of family genealogies and halting sites.
“Becoming a partner in the project meant that our students and staff have access to these researchers and get to learn about the importance of Travellers in Irish society,” Prof Till explains.
The partnership has been so successful that Prof Till’s class has continued to work with Pavee Roads Home and Pavee Point.
“We have received an Irish Research Council New Foundations award to work on a story-mapping toolkit so that other community and Travellers’ groups can research, document and map their stories, and have started a new community mapping project in Coolock,” she adds.
‘Invisible’
“Our history and our lived experience is different to mainstream history and lived experience, and has been invisible,” says Collins, co-director of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre.
Nomadism was never validated here but instead designated as vagrancy, he says, forcing Travellers “to settle and to conform”.
As a result, knowledge of the traditional Traveller way of life, and of the routes and campsites that criss-cross the country, are at risk of being forgotten.
It's why a huge part of the Pavee Roads Home project was to capture and document personal testimonies from older Travellers, such as Sheila Reilly, who is now in her 80s.
“Teaching the young people to learn about the Traveller way of life is important,” she says. “It was a very different life. A hard life but good in summer too, when the countryside would be beautiful and there were no phones or tellies. It was very cold in winter, but it was our way of life.”
Her father was a tin smith, making buckets. In October he would pick potatoes, and in July and August she recalls her whole family out on the bog cutting turf.
“I was delighted with the project, and very proud of it,” says Sheila. “I’m delighted to have the young people coming and asking me about it, that they want to know about it. That way of life is gone now but we are still talking to the young people about the culture, and the camps. We want to keep it alive. We don’t want it to die.”