At ten years old, I began to learn about the history of my people. It was the centenary year of the Crofting Act, and a collaboration between the newly-minted Lanntair, and the same-age-as-myself Comhairle brought about something that neither one could have done on its own: it gave young islanders the dignity of acquaintance with the value of their own culture. Thanks to the vision of these two important organisations, we were being equipped with a vital piece of understanding: though we had always been fighting to make our voices heard, that did not diminish the value of what we had to say.

Forty years on, and the news is dispiriting. A council budget, squeezed beyond endurance, is having to be pared back at the point of delivery. It is difficult, when fundamental care packages are threatened, when bus services are removed, to make an argument for the Comhairle spending money on something that is all too often written off as ‘frivolous’.

You have to be wary, however, of arguments along those lines. I don’t think we should have to choose between decent care packages for the elderly, and arts and culture for all. Somebody who works in an arts centre, or a library, or in drama, does work that is life-enhancing. No, it is not essential for keeping body and soul together – but it does enrich those souls, and surely that is something worth fighting for. Ultimately, if the Comhairle cuts the Lanntair’s funding, will there be more home care hours available? Will there be more frequent bin collections, a better bus service, fewer potholes and –  luxury of luxuries – pavements that aren’t just painted on?

No: the answer is ‘no’. This is not a moral decision between buying food for the kids and going to the bookies with your last tenner – this is further evidence that these islands do not have a voice. Our council doesn’t get enough income. And why doesn’t it? Well, I’ll let you in on a secret that I first learnt at the age of ten . . . no one on the outside cares about us.

They think we’re inferior, and they regard us as a nuisance. Ever since Willie Ross described the Highlander as being on every Scot’s conscience, there’s been a vague sense of annoyance that what had been going on for centuries – the denigration of the Gael – wasn’t quite as socially acceptable as it had been in dear old Butcher Cumberland’s day. No, that pesky HIDB, just by existing, gave people the notion that maybe the Highlanders, and their even more remote counterparts, out in the islands, actually required some attention. Lip service, though, nothing more.

‘Chucking buns across the fence’, is how one writer described public policy in the Gàidhealtachd since the establishment of the HIDB, which I tend to agree with. Only, for quite a while now, the buns have been getting smaller, staler and partially-eaten before they ever land on this side of the rylock.

We are still, depressingly, at the whim of the outsider. Every aspect of our lives – our economy, our transportation, our arts, our language and culture, our land use, our health care – is governed by a quango, usually underpinned by some appallingly outdated slate of legislation, thrown together in a foreign parliament. If we ask for island representation on these boards, we are accused of racism, of not wanting people who know what is best for us, even if they do live hundreds of miles away and can’t pronounce Bunabhainneadar.

As a consequence, we have developed the mentality of the colonised. We sit by the fence, waiting for the substandard buns. When fewer of those arrive, and we protest feebly, we are told that the bakery can’t subsidise our indolence forever, that the cupboard is bare, and we will have to reorganise our priorities.

Culture is always the first thing to be attacked. How far back into our history do you want to reach? The end of the Lordship of the Isles in 1493 – the last time we had local government in the islands until the London Parliament graciously gave us back a tame version of it in 1975? Or the Statutes of Iona in 1609, when clan chiefs were forced, by the monarch, to agree to educate their sons in English? Or the Battle of Culloden in 1746? Or the Clearances? Or the Highland Famine? Or the Metagama?

They were all disastrous in their own way. The only outside attack we came through thriving was the Viking invasion – because at least they had the honesty to wield axes and scream bloody murder. Every other attack on our way of life has come in the same insidious guise: helping and civilising, while quietly dismantling and destabilising. 

Our culture – who we are and how we live – is our foundation, and no one knows it, or values it, but ourselves. The Scottish Parliament doesn’t care whether the Comhairle has enough money to keep its doors open, far less the doors of an arts centre. But we have to care.

I have stood on the stage in An Lanntair’s auditorium a few times. Once, it was at UHI’s research conference; another time, it was to mark the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and several time, it has been to talk about different aspects of our Gaelic heritage. Through good times and bad, it has been a platform for all kinds of expressions of island life, whether through music, drama, or film.

I owe the beginning of my own cultural education to a partnership between An Lanntair and the Comhairle, and I want to have faith that outside neglect will not be the means of pulling down that edifice. But if it isn’t going to, some real leadership has to come from within.