Broken Treaties - TV documentary in production Raymond McCullough: Precious Oil Productions Ltd

Scots/Irish and the restoration of culture and hope
among First Nations in Manitoba, Canada

(Filmed on location in Manitoba, Canada, and Northern Ireland, in 2005 and 2007, and currently in post production in our Belfast-based Edit Facility)

Mistreated and abused
In essence, this documentary exposes how we – the Scots/Irish – mistreated and abused the native people of North America and how they, in turn, after many decades of this degradation, found their culture validated by Israeli Jews - of all people! And as we also seek to right the wrongs done in our name, the response has been quite amazing.

Today, among Native Americans, the rates of disease, alcoholism and suicide are higher than in many third world countries. Yet only a handful of people on this side of the Atlantic are even aware of the legacy of pain and social deprivation left by those who left these shores. Hidden from history for centuries, this is a story that now demands to be told!

Raymond McCullough was editor of Irish magazine, ‘Bread’, for six years and has for many years been involved in reconciliation between Protestant and Roman Catholic in Ireland. However, until the visit of a group of Native Americans to Belfast in 2004 he, like most people here, was completely unaware of any need for reconciliation between ourselves and the First Nations in North America.

Not free to practice their own faith
A couple of hundred years ago, many Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics, left the shores of Ireland and Scotland because, under English rule, they were not free to practice their own faith. Presbyterians were mockingly referred to as ‘blackmouths’. Their worship services had to be held in secret in the hedges. Roman Catholics, likewise, had to visit a ‘mass rock’ out in the fields. Their priests were hunted, with a bounty on their heads.

So, we set sail for the new world – and the promise of freedom of religion! Many of these people became the founders of modern-day Canadian culture. Freedom, that is, for us, the new white settlers, but not, apparently, for the indigenous people of North America. These were people who had already been living there for 4,000 years! We described these First Nations as ‘savages’ and ‘pagans’, their worship as ‘devil worship’ and their culture as ‘backward’ and ‘depraved’.

Forced them into ‘Reserves’
We made them all kinds of promises and signed solemn treaties. But we then proceeded to break every one of them! They welcomed us and agreed to share their land. But we stole all of the best land and forced them into ‘Reserves’ on the poorest and remotest parts. To this day only 3% of First Nation people have ever responded to the ‘white man’s religion’. And the people who carried out much of this policy had surnames that could easily be those of your Ulster neighbours!

The Mounties rounded up native children, cut off their hair, and placed them in a church-run Residential School system. This was a way of providing a ‘civilizing’ education ‘on the cheap’. But it resulted in widespread indoctrination, abuse, and the deaths of 50,000 children – a 40-50% death rate! To this day, neither the Canadian government, ‘Department of Indian Affairs’, nor the main denominations, have been willing to reveal where the bodies of those children are buried!

‘120 Drums’ came to Belfast
In February 2004, Grand Chief Linda Prince came to Belfast with the ‘120 Drums of Thunder’. 80 First Nation Americans performed their native dances and shared their culture. They explained that they had come to bless the Celtic people – we who in the past, had definitely not been a blessing to them!

Imagine their surprise, then, that they, perceived at home as ‘dirty, drunken Indians’, should be so enthusiastically welcomed. This happened not only in Ireland, but also in Israel. In 1999, Linda led a group to Israel. In Jerusalem, Orthodox Jews arrived in te