Churches looking to the Celtic Christian tradition exemplified by Columba do not have a unified view on the situation of indigenous peoples around the world, but when the matter has arisen have generally expressed support for them, and often provided a platform for indigenous voices.
There is one thing, though that the Churches in that tradition have not done: they have not confessed their guilt. There is no acknowledgement that the Celtic Churches revere a man who was part of a colonialist movement - a movement that now has almost completed the cultural genocide of an indigenous people.
Not in Australia.
Not in America
Not somewhere else.
Here.
To the best of our knowledge - and it's a very poor best - Mull was at or close to the most northerly point of the Hen Ogledd - the Old North, the lands of the indigenous people of this part of Ynys Prydain, the Island of Britain. But at least we know its name: the indigenous folk called it Malai - The Isolated Mountain. Iona is not so fortunate; the colonial name Inis I is often taken to mean Yew-tree Island, but the indigenous name it replaced is lost - or is it? The colonial " eo" and the indigenous "yw" are so close; maybe the invaders merely took the indigenous name and fettled it a bit to suit their colonial tongues?
Whatever. The fact is inescapable; Columba was just one small part of the colonisation of the Hen Ogledd by the invading Gaelic speaking Irish. OK, a peaceable part, there is nothing in the histories to suggest that the monks were anything other than at peace with the islanders - but was that because the damage had already been done? Was it because Columba landed on an island from which the indigenous people had already been driven?
Almost certainly yes, but there is just a smidgeon of evidence against. A bare handful of indigenous place names survive on Iona - few as they are, would any have survived a genocide - physical or cultural? And there is another bare handful of place names which hint at lost folk tales - no surprise in itself, but a surprising proportion refer to women; and furthermore to women who are in some way honoured or powerful or respected. Naturally there are stories linking these places to the Nunnery - but late and very unconvincing stories. The original stories are surely lost - but they must have been similar to stories recorded in the indigenous tradition elsewhere.
Coincidence? Almost certainly - but only almost.
In any case, the slow colonisation continued long after Columba's time, with resistance seriously weakened by infighting within the indigenous people: the ancient rivals of the Hen Ogledd, the "Pictish Confederation", which held the lands north and east, saw the invading Gaels not as a common threat, but as a potential ally in their long quarrel. Eventually all the lands north of the Afon Clud - the River Clyde (She Who Cleans - another lost story like those from Iona?) all that land fell to the invaders, was colonised, stripped of its indigenous place names, its indigenous tales, its indigenous culture.
Then the great port of the Hen Ogledd on the Afon Clud, Glascae, fell, was renamed Glasgow with a fake Gaelic etymology, and finally Alt Clud, the Height Of The Clyde, the seat of the Kings of the Hen Ogledd, was besieged and taken, conquered by thirst, not force of arms. And conquered not by the Gaelic speaking Irish, nor by the Pictish traitors, but by a second invader, a second coloniser: the Danes. At first, Amlaib and his brother Imar had support from the ever-myopic Picts, but by then a union had been cobbled together between the Picts and the Gaels, called the Kingdom of Scotland, and wiser counsels prevailed: the Danes had to take Alt Clud alone. And they did.
As for the indigenous people, the loss of their prifddinas at Allt Clud was a fatal blow, from which the Hen Ogledd never recovered. A Kingdom of Ystrad Clud - Strathclyde in the colonial tongue - lingered on south of the Afon Clud, eventually uniting with Rheged even further to the south, but the Danes attacked the coast of what is now Lancashire, cutting the link between the northern and the southern kingdoms of the Cymri.
After Caer Llawn fell, that we call Lancaster, the Afon Llawn - the River Lune - became the southern border of Ystrad Clud, but a border that inexorably moved northwards, until the last remnant of Ystrad Clud was absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland, and the Hen Ogledd was no more. The colonisers had won, the indigenous peoples were forgotten.
Almost forgotten.
We have literature from the Hen Ogledd - copies of copies of copies, admittedly - indeed much of our knowledge of the indigenous kingdoms of Cymru itself, and even of those indigenous lands absorbed into Lloegr, like Elmet and Cernow, comes from sources whose ultimate origin is in the Hen Ogledd.
And there are place names. We are seeing the erasure of these names even as I write: fake Gaelic etymologies are being invented and proclaimed for all the indigenous names of Ystrad Clud. But Cymri is still there, thinly disguised as Cumbria; Blencathra, Pen y Geint - sorry, Pennyghent! - and many more hills and rivers preserve echos of the indigenous folk from the lands that once united Gogledd and De, North and South. Perhaps we should especially mention Pen y Bryn, Pendle, with its dark tales of powerful women - does this resonate with the tales on Iona?
Strangest of all, the great city of Glasgow, with its fake Gaelic name, is still named Glescae in the speech of its inhabitants, despite a millennium of schoolteachers trying to beat it out of them.
But that is just history.
The colonial powers have won, and Columba was on the winning side.
Dunmail Last-king sleeps under his cairn, and he will never lift sword again.
The Hen Ogledd is lost for ever, and it is impossible to imagine that it could ever come back.
Except.
Except, there is a prophecy. Some say is by Columba himself.
"In Iona of my heart, Iona of my love, instead of monks' voices shall be lowing of cows; But ere the world shall come to an end, Iona shall be as it was."
As it was? Most people take it to mean that the cows replaced the monks, but that one day monks will replace the cows - but is that what it really says? The monks are as it is now for Columba; but he says that Iona will be as it was - before the cows, yes, but also before the monks, in Columba's "as it was ", not in Columba's "as it is".
Maybe, just maybe, the prophecy will one day be fulfilled, and the songs of the Hen Ogledd will once again be sung among the yew trees of Ynys Yw.