UNDERSTANDING THE MIND BEFORE REBUILDING THE WORLD

What is Psychological Colonisation?

Colonisation isn’t just about taking land. It’s about taking the mind. For centuries, colonial powers didn’t only control laws, education, and religion—they reshaped how people saw themselves, their neighbours, and their place in the world. Over time, this invasion of the psyche became more dangerous than any battlefield. It made people forget who they were—and accept who they were told to be.

At TraVision Foundation, we have spent years uncovering how psychological colonisation operated in Ireland and how it continues today especially in education, policy, identity, and health. This is not theory. It’s real. It affects every school, every hospital, every media outlet and every child learning who they are.

This Didn’t Just Affect Irish Travellers

Much of our work is rooted in the experiences of Irish Travellers but let us be clear: Psychological colonisation changed everyone on this island.

For Irish Travellers, it meant being criminalised, separated, misrepresented, and erased from national memory.

It Also Reprogrammed the Settled Irish

But for those who became the “Settled Irish,” it meant something else: the slow, quiet reprogramming of their identity to fit a colonial framework.

This process didn’t happen by choice. It was built into the school system, the church, the laws, the class system. Over generations, people adapted—not because they were weak, but because survival demanded it. Gaelic names were dropped. Mobility became a crime. Respectability was redefined. Shame was inherited.

What was once a living, Indigenous Gaelic culture shared across both Travellers and non-Travellers was split, renamed, and controlled. That split still shapes Ireland’s national conversation today.

WHY IT STILL MATTERS

Understanding the ongoing impact of psychological colonisation in Ireland today.

  •  Mental Health Crisis
    Ireland has one of the highest youth suicide rates in Western Europe.

  •  Identity Loss
    Cultural erasure and internalised division through colonial labels.

  •  Institutional Continuity
    Colonial behaviours still embedded in systems and structures.

  •  Education Gaps
    A curriculum that lacks Indigenous memory and cultural truth.

Our Work at TraVision Foundation

We are the first and only independent foundation in Ireland.

  •  Traveller history and lived experience

  •  Microbiome and scientific continuity

  •  Archaeology and Gaelic cultural survival

  •  Education, language, and identity

  •  Institutional behaviours that remain colonial

We do not rely on state funding… both science and Indigenous cultural memory.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

We’ve already revealed how post-1922 institutions carried colonial ideas into “independent” Ireland.
We’ve shown how laws, charities, and education policies reshaped Irish life from the inside out.

But this is just the surface.

Much of our work remains unpublished—shared only through trusted collaborations.
We protect this knowledge because it is powerful, and because it must be handled with care.

WE INVITE YOU TO COLLABORATE

Are you part of a university, school, health service, cultural institution, or research centre?
Do you want to better understand Ireland’s identity crisis, mental health crisis, or youth disengagement?

We welcome collaboration with:

✅ Psychologists and mental health professionals
✅ Educational institutions
✅ Decolonial researchers
✅ Human rights advocates
✅ Cultural and language organisations

Together, we can build programmes, research models, and healing tools rooted in truth not theory.

Join the Movement