Left to its own devices and allowed to develop freely, a culture has no need to be asserted. However, in the face of marginalization, ignorance, condescension, and oppression, a culture needs to assert itself and resist destruction by any means necessary. Most aspects of resistance are within the matrix of the uncounted daily expressions of cultural survival that are expressed in either the relearning of the culture and its language by those who have become assimilated, or the maintenance of the culture and language by those who have not assimilated. The Celtic cultures can be viewed in this light.
It is only fair and just that the Celtic peoples of today are defending themselves, their cultural practices, and languages through the many means they have at their disposal. Those of you out there who are reading this and wondering what all the fuss is about should check your own conscious and remember that communities that are threatened with extinction do not have such a luxury. Perhaps the only fair and just thing you can do is to support and defend the right of Celtic peoples to survive as Celtic peoples themselves and not as some local variants of the English and French-speaking worlds.
You can continue to remain blind to the struggle for survival and independence that Celtic communities are currently undergoing, or you can at least open your eyes to what is at stake. Celtic peoples will no longer serve as colorful backdrops to the degenerate Arthurian fantasies, the cultural tourism, or the prejudicial historical ignorance of the Imperialist French and Anglo-American worlds. We are retaking our heritage for ourselves and restoring it to its rightful place of belonging within the human family. We need no one else to validate our existence. We will validate our own existence and the terms of its definition.
Likewise, we will make our own space for the expression of our own cultures and the cultivation of our languages, regardless of anti-Celtic prejudice to the contrary. We are still here, we are once again growing, our languages and cultural expressions are coming back, and we aren’t going anywhere. Any of you out there who sympathize with us are greatly appreciated and welcomed to join with us, in whatever way you know how. One of the best ways to help is to learn to speak one of our languages—the confidence this will give many Celtic language speakers cannot be over-estimated. It shows us that others feel our languages are as worthy of acquisition as any other language. And it reaffirms our conviction that we alone will validate our own existence, because others have deemed that validation strong enough to follow through with.
Emphasis is given to our languages because in the Celtic mindset, language is the primary expression of a culture. So, instead of, or in addition to, your campaigning, researching, educational efforts, or donating of support, learn to speak a Celtic language. If you already speak one, use it more often. Celtic-speakers who witness such a thing will be re-energized in their own efforts. Find a Celtic community and get to know its people. And remember that Celtic political mobilization is a very important part of modern Celtic survival, without which Celtic cultures and languages today might have very well been extinct and forgotten. Nothing less than this is expected of any of you out there who identify with the Celtic cultural continuum in some way.
If you think that this stance is in some way ‘too militant’, you should refer to the history of the Celtic peoples and learn about the centuries of oppression to which the Celts have been subjected. In order for us to move on, we must recognize what has truly happened, the injustices must be known—Not to stoke up an irrational fear and hatred for the dominant societies which currently oppress Celtic communities, but to allow ourselves the space to view our history from our own perspective, and to give ourselves the tools to see the Imperial project known as the "Global Market" for what it is. We have the right to take up our own history and to define the meanings of our experiences, even if it offends the sensibilities of smug unconscious superiority of many of you Americans, English, and French out there who may object to our survival and resistance as being ‘unreasonable’.
The neat borders of well-defined, yet artificially constructed, nations are cracking apart, and for the first time in generations, we Celts have impressive opportunities to work out our freedom and independence, whatever the means. (The means also depending upon the level of state repression, whether official or not, and the social strife caused by such repression that Celtic communities have to face today. This varies from region to region, and among the diaspora, such as in America, there is almost total freedom to build strong foci of support for Celtic cultures and languages, if not to build new Celtic communities themselves.) To simply roll-over and disappear is not an option if we are to assert our Celtic identity in today’s world. The extinction we are faced with is obviously distinct from other peoples’ experiences of being threatened with extinction, but in the end, extinction is extinction. Thus in the spirit of any and every people who resist extinction, we will continue to resist. We will continue to assert our Celtic identity until the time when such a defensive stance is no longer necessary. No matter how bleak our future survival as a distinctive group of people seems, we will continue to live and act as if we will always be around, because in our terms we will always be around.
As you are alive, we are alive. And the lies about our death or disappearance have been greatly exaggerated and reinforced by those who wish to see us gone. But here we are today, Celtic and alive. Tá muid beo ó thús go deireadh, ó Shamhain go Samhain. Agus beidh muid beo go deo.