As part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021, The Fine Art Society presents Owners of the Soil, examining ties between land, identity and ownership through the early Scottish diaspora’s dual identity of colonised and coloniser
Images courtesy of The Fine Art Society
Will Maclean’s collection of work is based on the narratives of six native Gaelic speakers who were born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the shores of Loch Broom in the village Polbain, Coigach, Ross-shire.
They were from three large families of Macleans, MacLeods, and Campbells. It was accepted that they would have to leave their homes to find a living away from the Highlands either to travel south in the UK or overseas. Mary Ross and Alexander Campbell settled in New Zealand, Rhoda Maclean in Australia, Alexander Maclean and Kenneth Maclean in North America and Murdo Macleod in South Africa.
Scottish historian John Smith, commenting on the Education Act (Scotland) 1872 stated, “Emigration, whether voluntary or enforced was strongly encouraged by education and the losses caused in this way very often of the youngest and the best were irreplaceable and are nowadays simply incalculable.”
Duncan Mackenzie, a Crofter of Coigach, is quoted in the 1883 Napier Commission, a public inquiry into the condition of crofters in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland: “Now I am an old man and I have no family - they have taken wings and flown away, they were not of such a kind as would remain in this place”.
Alongside Maclean’s collection are Shaun Fraser’s works in glass, bronze, ink and print that focus on Nova Scotia, an area dominated by Scottish settlements with place names that displaced First Nation Mi’kmaq titles. Incorporating peat and organic matter, Fraser’s work holds an innate link to the locality upon which it draws.