Re-imagining the land, North Sutherland, Scotland

This paper focuses on contemporary re-imaginings of the land in North Sutherland that counter global, modernist discourse. One narrative concerns the reinvention of the past; the other concerns the reconstruction of the present. Through both, people create what Edward Said (Culture and Imperialism. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1994) calls a ‘culture of resistance’ to contemporary as well as past processes of dispossession. The stories are about reclaiming land through a local, collective imaginary. They chart cultural territory (collective rights to land) at the same time that they dispute geographical territory (private and non-local rights to land). The evidential base for the discussion is provided, first, by the actions of local history groups which have emerged over the past decade and, second, by the actions of the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust. The latter, formed in 2000, has become a significant player in the struggle to assert collective rights to land under crofting tenure in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Its central remit is to own the solum of the Naver Forests currently controlled by the Forestry Commission.