Yenish Travellers. Blonde Angel as Celtic-Teutonic Yenish Traveller? Need Facts.

Blondes among the darker.

Why assume a crime?

Is the blonde angel Yenish? Maria and Greek Roma.

Update in light of comment, below. 

 As of 11/2/2013.  The child Maria's biological parents have been found in Bulgaria as the Greek Roma family who are raising her, had stated.  The identity is confirmed, and no crime appears to have been committed.  See http://abcnews.go.com/International/mystery-gypsy-girls-identity-confirmed-dna/story?id=20681522 . 

 In Ireland as well, no issue remains as to a blond child in a darker family there as well. See http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/world/europe/europe-mystery-girls/. 

Prejudices betray us, in the absence of facts.

1. An old issue now recurs. Alarms are raised about why darker skinned parents are raising a lighter-skinned child in their nomadic, or once-nomadic, Roma culture. Headlines:  the light-skinned child, the blond, blue-eyed one, might have been stolen. Take the child into protective custody, jail the parents! See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/21/greece-mystery-angel-girl-roma-gypsy/3142559/.

Might have been. The fever to feed a stereotype about racial hierarchy rules. No facts first, before painting the ending. The anti-minority mythology, the ancient libel about (once) Jews, and now Gypsies, grows.  Another such child has been found in a Roma family in Ireland, see http://world.time.com/2013/10/22/another-blonde-girl-removed-from-roma-family/   The Irish "Tinkers" are Travellers of, I understand, ethnic Irish background, see http://irishtraveller.org.uk/  And look Irish, not of Asian or other dark-skinned descent.  Still, smear.

Author Louise Doughty, with many books about Roma and Travellers, has risen to the current issue and called it, when it occurs as in the current fact-free zone, recurrent libel, see http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/angel-kidnapped-by-gypsies-libel-replayed

2.  Roma or other nomadic groups are not alike. There are blondes like us. See an overview: Open Society Foundation, Voices, History of Gypsies, Roma, Travellers.  It has long been known that Travellers in the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe see themselves as separate from "Gypsy" or Roma groups also on the Continent.  Are the Travellers' origins Celtic, deep into Europe's own past, and not derivative from a migration from India.  Surnames can suggest a Romani past sometimes -- look at the Yenish, for example, in Ancestry.com.  Do a Romney and see the variations.

3.  Yenish, for example. Who are the fair-skinned nomadic peoples.  The Yenish Travellers, are among European nomadic peoples, even if now settled, and the Swiss response to them has been brutal.

3.1  Research.

Read academic papers on the topic, four submitted at the University of Greenwich, and one including specific mention of the tool of accusations of nomadic peoples' child abductions and state persecution responses against them generally (in Switzerland here) at  http://www.rae.ac.uk/submissions/ra1.aspx?id=58&type=hei&subid=1917, and all dating in the range of 2003,2004, 2005, 2006.

Find one such paper as a google book, The Role of the Romanies.  sections focusing on tales of child abduction and why they often seem to swirl about these wilfully maligned cultures, including the Yenish culture of Switzerland. for example, and other countries. , see Strike fear into hearts:  tell tales of child abduction, changelings, and target some group in need of, says the mainstream, control.

3.2.  Self-education.  The Yenish on film.  Listen.

Watch the Yenish in this Yenish film, so titled, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Z3X7yTiDQ; and another at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkqFB9S-Xok/.  Go down the right hand menu for more -- in America, anywhere.  I searched for Jeinesche Bond Letzebuerg, listed as the film's originator, and found nothing.   Here is a January 2012 long film, Die Letzen Freien Menschen, but in German, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td8chodhYsQ.  Music, haunting.

3.3  Read Louise Doughty.  Novels help normalize lives.  Try Fires in the Dark.

4.  Journalists.  Study your topic.

This issue of how nations deal with cultures within it is not de minimis, to be swept under traditionally boundaried countries' rugs.

The overall issue is ethical, humanitarian, right to autonomy. Is there such a human right to autonomy, to be able to move about instead of staking out turf?  With origins in various mists, and beset by urban legends that serve to rouse the settled against them, how do they defend.  Is there a right to assumed innocence? Of course not. And any group builds in survival techniques so they can survive.  Can those be defused? The cases do need to be vetted; but why remove a child if the home is safe, minimal adequate care even, and the parents cooperating in place?  The stereotypic assumption of guilt in a minority again is frightening.

There is more to nomadic cultures than the one category, Roma, Romani, embraces.  Stories recur in European and other history as children of the road, many now halted, caravan families often forced into alien molds of forced settlement. A broad brush paints them as darker skinned, dark hair.

 Get us some facts before arousing stereotypes.  Knee-jerk police-types. Unless there is harm being done or likely to be done to a child, and so long as a flight risk is not feasible (make it so), leave the child with the parents while you investigate calmly, quietly, and then perhaps tiptoe away while the child sleeps, unaware. 
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FN.    Associations:

Nomadic peoples in Scandinavia.  Are they there?

I did see begging people on our recent improvised road trip (Norway Road Ways), but have no information on ethnicity, or whether they were migrants as any others might be, just that they were dark-skinned.  I cannot discern clothing styles with any confidence.

Housing.  I saw only one trailer settlement in Norway this year on an improvised road trip.  Trailers, mobile homes, in groups, are not commonly visible from the roadside.Are they there? The people in that park were not dark, but I did wonder what purpose it served, construction going on, dirt road in parts, there hidden 'way up on the summit of a moderate mountain at Kvam, a place the sign called the Peer Gynt Trailer Park.  Peer Gynt country, of course.

Curiosity, speculation without facts:  Are these or were these residents nomadic once and is this a "settlement" by the governmenr?  Or is this just senior housing (then why so far away, up a winding road, up up. Is it benevolent low-income housing open to anyone.  The people I saw were fair-skinned.

• There are Gypsies in Norway, do a search. In Norwegian, they were called the Sigoynere.  In Sweden, the Zigenare.  One motivation -- to make money, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MILysXJHr1U/.  The narrators here appear to be of darker skin origin, not the Celtic-Teutonic who could blend in more easily physically. 
• And the cultural clashes are increasing, see http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/a-gypsy-fiasco-in-oslo/  Roma had, of course, been included in the racial purity slaughters of WWII and before and stigma after, see Long Pursuit of Racial Purity, http://mondediplo.com/1999/10/11/gypsy

Literature: Fires in the Dark. An Editor Betrays the Essence

Roma in WWII.  What countries.  

What untrumpeted devastation. 

For a variety of reasons, I am interested in Slovakia, a smaller country in Central Europe, but one with an important history:  how do ethnic controls, exterminations, proceed, become "accepted."  See overview at http://hitlernews.cloudworth.com/roma-gypsy.php./  I am continuing my interest in Slovakia in particular at Slovakia Road Ways.

Has the devastation of this ethnic group, guilty only of its difference from regimentation as the West saw was virtuous (themselves), been appreciated.

• Update:  Forced sterilization of Romany women.  Letter to editor, New York Times today July 5, 2012.  " *** Romany women in Slovakia are forcibly sterilized for racist reasons. *** Letter triggered by forced abortions in China reports, letter by Nancy Northrup, who identifies herself as President and  Chief Executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, New York. Find the organization at http://reproductiverights.org/en/about-us

1.  Awareness rising, but deflected.
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A fine novel for the beginner in learning about Roma culture, including me, is Fires in the Dark, by Louise Doughty, see http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/307210.Fires_in_the_Dark. 

Hwaet.  The cover there online, is not the cover on my library book, 2004, Harper Collins.  The library book I have shows a tall Aryan looking woman, even with the coins in her braids, with all the features of, say, fair skinned as in Norway; not dark-skinned.  The man looks more ethnically accurate: the man with her less Aryan, and even non-Aryan as in Hispanic or South American.  Why the culture blending, or culture-avoidance?

 Did someone approach an editor after seeing the odd couple, and request, and get, the new cover -- copping out of ethnicity entirely, and showing only a Roma wagon on the horizon.  I would have preferred the change to be this:  a Roma woman, dark-skinned and tall and proud, as in the book.

Fair use: small portion of cover -- commentary on the use of light skin instead of the dark skinned woman in the book. 

Fires in the Dark, fair use portion of cover for commentary, novel by Louise Doughty

2.  Read the book.  Learn what it was like in the years leading up to WWII in the Czech Republic, Slovakia.  And during WWII.  Not to be a spoiler, but the day-to-day accounts of life in the camps is overwhelming.

3.  Point remains.  People with dark skin, for those of us with light skin, are fully human and deserve to be represented as such -- with all the human loves, betrayals, tragedies. What is it to have to "pass" as Aryan in order to survive.   What essential values separate the ethnicities -- and where do the whites fall far short.  Think of that.  Who cuts the corners, is far less "clean", who remains complicit in the name of profit.  On the other hand, do both groups abuse women. Orthodox Jewish scholars may justify their lack of employment, working for others, on religious ground.  Is the Roma refusal, or at least reluctance, to work for others, but to be self-sufficient, admirable? Of course.  How do we "frame" the other.

4.  Enjoy, then report what other covers you find. I understand from the book jacket that Louise Doughty has Roma in her family ancestry.  Editors betray with their covers. What editors do may not reflect the author's preferences for integrity, but only profit.

5.  What European countries also foster human trafficking, including of Roma.  I saw the sign, in English, in one of Slovakia's rural areas, for a farm for such activities.  What persons of Slavic-non-Slavic ethnic origin are kept there. What are the roots of our religious and cultural customs that promote that. See also http://www.slovakiaroadway.blogspot.com

Contemporary authors, writers, songs, sites - and roots of bury me standing

Meet people and resources today - in addition to the "Zoli" website itself at ://www.colummccann.com/books/zoli.htm - Colum McCann, author.

1. Blog. An adult woman, NE US, on "Zoli" - a blog at //www.gypsygirlpress.net/gypsynews/labels/Zoli.html

2. Book, "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and Their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, NY Vintage 1996 - from the Gypsy saying, apparently, "Bury me standing, I've been on my knees all my life."

See review at ://www.indiastar.com/wallia2.htm. Says that, as of 1996, 12 million Gypsies worldwide, 8 million in Europe. Fonseca is described as a journalist, American, had been asst. ed. of the "Times Literary Supplement."

3. See this Ratdog CD, a protest song, So - "Bury Me Standing" has legs. Lyrics at the Grateful Dead Lyric & Song Finder at //www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/introjs.htm?/~acsa/songfile/BURYMEST.HTM

4. Tales and Stories. Ilona Lakova, at the Journal of the Mythic Arts, News and Reviews, at Endicott, site at ://endicottstudio.typepad.com/endicott_redux/myth_folklore_fairy_tales/index.html

That site also lists as artists and story sources

• "The Roads of the Roma," ed. Ian Hancock, Siobhan Dowd and Rajko Djuric
• Louise Doughty
• Margriet de Moor
• "The Road That Has No End: Tales of the Traveling People" - article in the Endicott Archives