1
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...they came as slaves, white slaves, that's all I know.
2
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They were in plantations.
3
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My own grandfather,
4
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they work in the land,
5
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they work in the land, my father work in the land, in the factory, making sugar.
6
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Well, they had to put them all under shelter
7
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because they couldn't stand the heat.
8
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I work in the plantation overseas,
9
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I work the fields, and do the boats_
10
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[narrator] What is it you love about Barbados?
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What I love about it, were born here.
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Born here, this my little island.
13
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[narrator] So you're complete Barbadian, you're not Scottish, you're Barbadian?
14
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Well, I born in Barbados.
15
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Am I Scottish, maybe great great great great grandfathers,
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that's al I could tell you.
17
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I understand my family came here by slave ship.
18
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And they was workin' as slaves,
19
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and then from there...
20
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went on, you know the skin couldn't take the sun,
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so they had coloured people then came.
22
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But all my family ... growing up was with the land.
23
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They work the land, they prepare food,
24
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but they never went to the supermarkets and thing
25
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for everything they want to eat they'll grow it theyself.
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_almighty.
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[narrator] Where are we in Barbados here?
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This is, eh, New Castle, close to Martin's Bay.
29
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[narrator-- can't hear question]
30
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Yeah,.... it look like it fit under the hill...
31
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if you stand you see it...
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under the property...
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I go Sister Margaret's church.
34
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St. John sometimes.
35
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Or sometimes I go to different religion.
36
00:02:07,917 --> 00:02:10,868
I don't keep one religion.
37
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I keep everybody that connect with the almighty.
38
00:02:16,533 --> 00:02:23,555
I understand that my father, his parents from Scotland,
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what part of Scotland, I don't know.
40
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Because, you know, people today talkin' about slavery,
41
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the __
42
00:02:39,289 --> 00:02:44,042
we all _ white people, some of us, was in slavery too,
43
00:02:44,042 --> 00:02:53,292
but they never, at least, _ the history or my education is not that good.
44
00:02:53,292 --> 00:02:57,458
My life story as far as I can remember
45
00:02:57,458 --> 00:03:06,038
I born in a place such as like a jungle, the woods, crept all woods,
46
00:03:06,038 --> 00:03:10,775
and my father and mother was pretty poor,
47
00:03:10,775 --> 00:03:15,000
raised up in a small 18' x 10' wooden house
48
00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:18,958
which we call a chattal house.
49
00:03:18,958 --> 00:03:20,625
When I was a youngster,
50
00:03:20,625 --> 00:03:23,458
I used to go __ Clifton Hall,
51
00:03:23,458 --> 00:03:26,638
52
00:03:26,638 --> 00:03:29,125
and has sprouts come up,
53
00:03:29,125 --> 00:03:32,463
as a boy I dig some...
54
00:03:32,463 --> 00:03:35,375
was hungry
55
00:03:35,375 --> 00:03:37,250
I had to eat some of them raw
56
00:03:37,250 --> 00:03:42,792
I had to eat them kinda things to survive.
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00:03:42,792 --> 00:03:46,083
__didn't get education.
58
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I got it from trying to read newspapers and comic books, and I start to get educated...
59
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workin... a cash machine, givin' back change and everything like that.
60
00:04:00,750 --> 00:04:03,798
I got the education I have.
61
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But I just relax at home now, enjoy a little pension from the government,
62
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it ain't a big lot, but..._
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00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:21,708
[narrator] The streets of modern Scottish cities
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are closer to the chattel houses of Martin's Bay than maybe we like to think.
65
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Those old tobacco lords aren't ancient history.
66
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Our relationship with the West Indies carries on.
67
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Tom Divine reckons it's time we understood it better. [/narrator]
68
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It's my belief that a mature nation,
69
00:04:39,375 --> 00:04:43,292
and I think Scotlad is a lot more mature than it was 20 to 30 years ago,
70
00:04:43,292 --> 00:04:45,583
a mature nation with a devolved parliament,
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with a greater sense of national self confidence,
72
00:04:48,125 --> 00:04:51,458
should be able to look at its past directly in the face,
73
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and come to terms with these issues.
74
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[narrator] Judith Martin is one woman who's making sense of her own past.
75
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Judith's ancestors are Barbadian on her father's side.
76
00:05:03,083 --> 00:05:08,733
An ancestor of his, was most likely William Bruce, who arrived on the island in 1746,
77
00:05:08,733 --> 00:05:11,846
surely a Jacobite, Barbados'd after the '45.
78
00:05:13,144 --> 00:05:18,625
Martin and Bruce, the family names couldn't be more Scottish, or more Redleg.
79
00:05:18,625 --> 00:05:20,417
And they turned full circle.
80
00:05:20,417 --> 00:05:22,292
Judith now lives in Glasgow,
81
00:05:22,292 --> 00:05:25,263
her father brought the family back from the West Indies in search of work. [/narrator]
82
00:05:27,726 --> 00:05:32,825
While we were here, he found out that there was a Scottish connection,
83
00:05:34,118 --> 00:05:38,292
and one day he said "I think that we have Scottish blood",
84
00:05:38,292 --> 00:05:42,021
that, ehm, Scots went to Barbados.
85
00:05:43,542 --> 00:05:46,667
I had my grandmother's birth certificate,
86
00:05:46,667 --> 00:05:51,208
her name was Ada Beaufort on the birth certificate,
87
00:05:51,208 --> 00:05:56,500
but later, later papers that I have, name her as Bruce.
88
00:05:56,500 --> 00:05:59,292
And I reckon she was born on the plantation.
89
00:05:59,292 --> 00:06:04,542
And her mother was a worker on the plantation,
90
00:06:04,542 --> 00:06:11,625
and I would think that her father would have been also a worker on the plantation.
91
00:06:11,625 --> 00:06:16,083
Her mother was a slave, quite simply.
92
00:06:16,083 --> 00:06:24,058
And that her father was also a slave, or white indentured labourer.
93
00:06:24,058 --> 00:06:26,250
I want to write about it somehow.
94
00:06:26,250 --> 00:06:29,934
I, I think my grandmother deserves that.
95
00:06:31,250 --> 00:06:38,708
You see that big building in the middle, here, that's the plantation house.
96
00:06:38,708 --> 00:06:43,292
And it's a beautiful, lush place.
97
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It's still there.
98
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Living history.
99
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We stood on the hill, looked down on that, and I'm emotional now, [voice cracking]
100
00:06:55,875 --> 00:06:58,069
at the thought of my gran.
101
00:07:06,958 --> 00:07:11,250
[narrator] Washed up by history, there's little doubt that for 200 years and more,
102
00:07:11,250 --> 00:07:16,250
the tradewinds of Atlantic commerce blew the descendents of Scots indentured workers
103
00:07:16,250 --> 00:07:19,917
into a cultural no man's land.
104
00:07:19,917 --> 00:07:23,583
To the black Bajan majority the Redlegs are a ghost people,
105
00:07:23,583 --> 00:07:26,042
they know very little about their white neighbours,
106
00:07:26,042 --> 00:07:28,958
nothing of their extraordinary story.
107
00:07:28,958 --> 00:07:33,904
Redlegs are mistaken for all-drinks-included package tourists.
108
00:07:33,904 --> 00:07:38,792
It's partly the fault of their forefathers who chose race over class.
109
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They won't make that mistake again.
110
00:07:41,333 --> 00:07:46,000
How easy it is to lose an identity, how hard to forge a new one.
111
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:50,866
If the Redlegs as an ethnic group are in danger of disappearing, it's for positive reasons.
112
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The great great grandsons and daughters of highland and lowland Scots
113
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are at last becoming fully fledged Barbadians. [/narrator]
114
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I don't remember where the lady came from,
115
00:08:04,125 --> 00:08:06,830
but I remember she looked at me and she asked me
116
00:08:07,630 --> 00:08:09,802
"You from Barbados?".
117
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I say "yes, I was born here",
118
00:08:11,292 --> 00:08:15,958
she say "you know, it's strange, you don't look so, you don't soud like a Bajan"
119
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I say well, I can't _ that.
120
00:08:19,583 --> 00:08:22,542
Cause I'm a Bajan by birth.
121
00:08:22,542 --> 00:08:29,044
We are all white, we are all one, and I don't think colour should really be a discrimination.
122
00:08:29,817 --> 00:08:32,833
[narrator] You're family's a great example, could you tell us about your own family now,
123
00:08:32,833 --> 00:08:34,633
your husband and your children and you're, all that? [/narrator]
124
00:08:35,855 --> 00:08:39,458
125
00:08:39,458 --> 00:08:42,917
We were married November is 40 years.
126
00:08:42,917 --> 00:08:48,000
At first, some of my family from my father's side,
127
00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:51,667
they didn't like the idea of me getting married to him,
128
00:08:51,667 --> 00:08:56,000
but I had to let them know, it is me,
129
00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:02,280
and I think, if it is my happiness, then, it should be ok, and so far no regrets.
130
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[narrator] How do you think for yer children and yer grandchildren, will it get easier? [/narrator]
131
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I'm hopin' it would for them.
132
00:09:11,083 --> 00:09:14,250
My oldest granddaughter, and she's headin' on to university.
133
00:09:14,250 --> 00:09:16,250
But all she's tellin' me is "granny not to worry,
134
00:09:16,250 --> 00:09:19,560
one good day there you're going to be out of this. I'm gonna help you"
135
00:09:19,560 --> 00:09:22,337
That's all she's tellin' me, that's my oldest gran.
136
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[narrator] Is she the first in your family to go to university? [/narrator]
137
00:09:26,311 --> 00:09:27,792
Yeah, first one in the family.
138
00:09:27,792 --> 00:09:30,250
And I'm very proud of her.
139
00:09:30,250 --> 00:09:32,070
And I feel good that's for sure.
140
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I don't mind what people think, I feel good. And I feel proud of who I am.