CÓMHRADH RI NIALL | A CONVERSATION WITH NEIL
JULY 2025 by DANI PICKERING
I have a complicated relationship with my great-great-great grandfather—who doesn’t, right?
On the one hand, I have become fiercely proud of his cultural legacy. B’ e Gàidheal a bh’ ann, and in no small part because of him I know that we whakapapa to the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, and the Isle of Raasay in particular. Even more directly, his bilingual diaries from the 1870s-1880s are one major reason why the Gàidhlig is in our family again for the first time in five generations.
From these diaries, I get an uncanny sense of where my own penchant for melodrama comes from (he certainly cuts loose when, in Aotearoa, writing in Gàidhlig affords him a bit more privacy than it would have air a’ Ghàidhealtachd). I’m even fortunate enough to have a photograph of him, which leaves little question as to where my hairline and eyes come from.
A greyscale portrait of mo shinn-sheachad-shinn sheanair, Niall MacLeòid of Raasay.
Of course, there’s also the other hand. Neil’s diaries document in extensive detail his time in the Armed Constabulary, and later the New Zealand Police, telling us how he not only helped build colonial infrastructure, but had a direct role in the displacement of Māori from their whenua by arresting and transporting them to Auckland for trial and imprisonment.
The diaries begin with his deployment to Alexandra Redoubt in Pirongia (pictured below), and end almost twenty years later, just before the ill-fated trip through Dargaville where he was shot in the chest by a kauri gum-digger in front of his family. As dubious honours go, becoming the first New Zealand Police officer killed in the line of duty must surely rank among the most.
A grassy knoll in Pirongia, where Alexandra Redoubt once stood.
Neil is very particular about what he writes about in which language. Despite being Cleared from his ancestral homeland at only 19 years of age though, and despite holding on to his ancestral tongue throughout his life, what stands out particularly strongly on this front is that he never once talks about his Constabulary or Police work in Gàidhlig—only English. In other words, his writing never fully connects the colonised-to-coloniser dots.
In the years since this discovery, despite putting more effort into attempting to commune with Neil than any other ancestor, I’ve struggled to cultivate a sense of connection with him. It’s not that he’s less relatable; if anything, through his diaries I see as much of him in me as my own parents. So why the comm silence?
Figuring this out has required me to get creative. Since learning about the mental gymnastics he performed to keep his Gàidheal and Pākehā selves separate (seriously Olympian feat, that), I figured one way I could try to get his attention might be by raising the issue of our colonial complicity with him sa Ghàidhlig.
So I wrote him a song.
***
Còmhradh ri Niall
Tha mi air tilleadh
far an do sheas sibh, o
chì mi sibhs’ a sheanair
'S chì mi tòrr chàich-se
mun chuairt oirbh
cò iadsan dhuibh?
Am b' iad ur caraidean?
Nach b' iad ach goill?
Am faca sibh iad mar fodhaibh?
A dh'aindeoin mo chuid
Gàidhlig bhriste
glèidhidh mis' ur dìleab a-nise
Tha e air fàs trom
na dh'fhàg sibh dhomh
cuideam dà shaoghal air ar guailnean
Nach bruidhinn sinn còmhla
gun sgeadas mun
na rinn sibh do Ngāti Apakura
Thàinig sibh gu bhith
mar a thug sibh
à Tìr an t-Soisgeil
‘S dh'fhalach sibhse
a h-uile dad dheth
anns ur cuid Beurla
A dh'aindeoin mo chuid
Gàidhlig bhriste
glèidhidh mis' ur dìleab a-nise
Tha e air fàs trom
na dh'fhàg sibh dhomh
cuideam dà shaoghal air ar guailnean
Dè an rathad às a seo?
Chan eil fhios agam, ach
feumaidh sinn a choiseachd còmhla
Seo bùrach truagh
a sheanair
feumaidh sibh bhithibh gam chluinntinn
Tionndaidhibh thugam
a sheanair
airson ar n-anaman fhèin
***
Conversation with Neil
I have returned
to where you stood
I see you, grandfather
And I saw others
all around you
who were they to you?
Were they your friends
or just strangers?
did you see them as below you?
Despite my
broken Gaelic
I carry your legacy now
It has grown heavy
what you left for me
the weight of two worlds on our shoulders
Let’s speak together
without ornamentation
about what you did to Ngāti Apakura
You became
what took you
From the land of Gospel
And you hid
everything of it
in your English [language]
Despite my
broken Gaelic
I carry your legacy now
It has grown heavy
what you left for me
the weight of two worlds on our shoulders
Where to from here?
I am not sure, but
we need to walk it together
This is a sorry mess
grandfather
you need to hear me
Turn towards me
grandfather
for the sake of our very souls
***
I have the document for this post open next to my submission against the Regulatory Standards Bill, and I keep asking myself: what does one have to do with the other? How does writing a song honour Te Tiriti? Contribute to constitutional transformation? Turn away the fascists at the door?
This kind of work is not comparable to submitting against the latest anti-Māori bill; fortifying the nearest noho whenua; rallying against genocide; blockading a weapons conference; striking with/as your union; building a social movement organisation; or taking boots to streets for the next hīkoi.
And yet while many of these kinds of activism and organising were the lifeblood of my twenties, deeply personal reckonings with ancestors and cultural inheritance have necessarily woven their way into the activism and organising of my thirties. This whakapapa deep dive started precisely because something in me knew I needed deeper reasons to stay in The Struggle than a sense of righteousness and/or self-interest masquerading as collective wellbeing. I wouldn’t call it burnout in the clinical sense, but I also realised around 2019 that I needed something more, something deeper in order to continue.
Working into more active relation with Neil and the rest of my tīpuna has given me that something more. If I face them long enough, and look back far enough, way off in the distance I can see that the Earth herself is one of them. For people and planet, right? Who else does that connect me to, if not everyone?
Neil’s daughter/my great-great grandmother Stella sits on a lawn chair surrounded by family. Sprawled out on the grass in front of her is my granddad, Rex Pickering. Mo ghaol orra.
