By Eoghan Connaughton, Santiago Rial ⁊ Oisín Ó Néill
For our second year taking part in the prestigious annual Samhain Celebrations at Powerscourt Estate & Gardens, the Gaelic Woodland Project hosted a special fundraising event on Sunday, 2nd November at 11am. This was an open conversation exploring Ireland’s deep — and often complicated — relationship with the land. Through anecdotes, insights from the Irish language, and reflections on history and culture, we invited discussion on how the people of Ireland have understood and engaged with their environment across time. Together, we’ll consider what lessons the past might hold for reimagining our connection with nature today.
In Ireland, few inherited, tradition-based frameworks remain for relating to the landscape beyond its agricultural use. Yet traces of an ancient intimacy with nature persist — in our old customs, in our stories, and in our language. The Irish language itself evolved in dialogue with the landscape and is filled with expressions that reveal a profound cultural affinity with place. Despite centuries of separation and cultural disruption, these linguistic and cultural fragments offer a path toward rediscovering a more rooted, reciprocal relationship with the natural world. As with many other Indigenous peoples around the world who experienced colonisation, the collapse of the Gaelic order effectively disinherited the Irish people from their own land within just a few generations. The centuries preceding this collapse had already unsettled Gaelic Ireland’s relationship with the landscape — through Norman invasion, continuous warfare, periodic famines, and an emergingtendency toward overexploitation of natural resources.
However, the three centuries that followed transformed the island irrevocably. The imposition of the Penal Laws institutionalised a form of apartheid, while forced emigration, recurring famines, and the collapse of traditional customs inflicted deep social and cultural trauma. Above all, the near-total erosion of the Irish language, a language that had evolved within the context of the Irish landscape, severed a vital link between people and place. Coupled with the advent of capitalism and the intensified exploitation of land to feed the British empire, these forces erased much of the inherited cultural affinity with the Irish landscape.
Through the exploration of historical evidence, lived anecdotes, and the Irish language, we hope to cultivate dialogue and inspire action that might help us recover a deeper sense of place and belonging — by reflecting on the values the Gael inferred in their relationship with nature.
What was the Gaelic connection to land like before any invasions? At what point did the Gaels themselves cease to be newcomers and begin to see themselves as truly native to Ireland? Was there once a reciprocal, mutually sustaining relationship between Gaelic society and the landscape? What might science, language, and culture reveal about the role our ancestors believed they played within the island’s ecology? And how does the Irish language — with its subtle metaphors and intricate vocabulary — open a window into the minds of those who first shaped this landscape through words?
Yet, this is not an attempt to reconstruct some imagined “golden age.” Rather, it is an invitation to collectively imagine a new story — one that allows the people of Ireland today, of all backgrounds and heritages, to build a more harmonious, regenerative relationship with this island.
While Ireland’s population and ancestry are richly mixed, the culture still carries traces of pre-Roman, Indo-European wisdom — fragments of an older consciousness that remained rooted in place. As a modern European nation, Ireland retains a certain essence: a bond with indigeneity not fully severed. It is this essence — alive in the land, the language, and the spirit — that continues to captivate hearts around the world. We believe something endures here: something the world resonates with, and perhaps, something it needs.
Ireland is a land of contrasts — a wealthy nation with a highly educated population, yet marked by intergenerational struggles with substance abuse and, more recently, an epidemic of loneliness. As a free and sovereign people, we are still learning who we are and what we stand for. A sense of disconnection — from self, from community, from the land — still persists.
A century ago, much of the cultural revival that helped inspire the 1916 Rising was initiated and shaped by members of the Anglo-Irish intelligentsia — poets, playwrights, and scholars who reawakened interest in Gaelic culture. Today, however, the rediscovery and reawakening of Ireland’s vast cultural inheritance is emerging from all corners of Irish society — in visual art, dance, theatre, poetry, scholarship, the revival of our language, and the work of communities. By bringing together the cultural values of Gaelic Ireland with the insights of modern knowledge, we hope to uncover new wisdom and practice — to regenerate our bonds with the landscape for the betterment of the Irish psyche, our sense of community, and our ecological inheritance. This vision is a form of positive nationalism: an Eco-Gaelic Revival, grounded in care for people and place.
This also raises a deeper question: What is indigeneity? How do we live with the land, rather than on it? True belonging requires intimacy — a lived familiarity with the places that sustain us. It invites dialogue with other Indigenous cultures, so that together we might co-create a resilient, shared myth that reconnects all people with this island.
We believe this is a vital expression of the Gaelic Woodland Project’s charitable purpose — to provide an embodied, lived experience of environmental stewardship, and to build community around shared values. By rippling these experiences through the hearts and minds of our community, we engage in a kind of cultural renewal — a gentle re-engineering of spirit — to build the critical mass needed for an evolution of the zeitgeist.
Our work goes far beyond the planting of trees. It seeks to rediscover the methodologies by which communities form and thrive — communities that live by codes of honour, mutual support, and shared care for the world around them. In the absence of tribal lands, where a people might once have been bound spatially and ancestrally, the Gaelic Woodland Project creates instead a psychological landscape for belonging — a modern tribe, with the meitheal as its meeting ground.
“The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue. Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread our blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. Imagine the books, the paintings, the poems, the clever machines, the compassionate acts, the transcendent ideas, the perfect tools. The fierce defense of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.”
– Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
