Accountability, My Joyful Compass

What does it mean to reclaim your cultural heritage in service to struggle? And what do you owe the people whose land you live on when you don’t know your own songs?

This month Chaise sits down with Ben Reid-Howells — Scottish-Canadian community organizer, co-founder of Deep Roots Alba.

Ben’s story begins in so-called Canada, growing up with immigrant parents and a longing to answer to the question: what are our people’s creation stories? That early hunger set him on a path that included a three-and-a-half year motorcycle journey from India to Scotland with his friend Prashant (the Vasudhaiva Ride, named for the Sanskrit phrase meaning “the whole world is one family”), a year building a grassroots climate justice center in Bihar, working with asylum seekers in the refugee camps of Lesbos, getting rooted into working-class Glasgow communities, and finally being brought into Gaelic culture by tradition bearers.

Deep Roots Alba grew from all of that. The work brings together people reclaiming Gaelic and Scottish heritage at the intersection of solidarity activism, specifically in relationship with communities facing systemic oppression globally. It’s about not showing up as “hungry ghosts” — culturally empty, collecting and leaching from other traditions — but arriving with nourished Roots and something to offer: your own songs, your own protocol, your own bread to put on the table.

Upcoming: Deep Roots Alba’s next gathering is Healing Across Waters: The Highland Welcome, July 1–6 at the Sheeland Collective in the north of Scotland. This gathering is designed specifically for diaspora, to grieve the rupture of disconnection and return people to culture in a grounded, powerful way.

Find Ben and Deep Roots Alba: Website: deeprootsalba.org Instagram: @deep.roots.alba

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