Two peoples, both victims of colonial violence, reach across an ocean for each other.
The Choctaw Nation and Ireland. A thread.
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1847. Ireland is in the depths of the Great Famine. A million people are dying. A million more are fleeing.
In Skullyville, Oklahoma, 27 Choctaw leaders meet to discuss what they can do.
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The Choctaw people had walked the Trail of Tears just 14 years earlier. Forced from their homeland. Thousands dead from starvation, cold and disease.
At the time of this meeting, many Choctaw in Skullyville are themselves hungry, destitute, and dying of illness.
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They gather $170 and send it to the starving poor of Ireland.
$170 from people who had almost nothing. Sent to strangers on another continent they would never visit. For no reason except that they recognised the suffering.
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The money reaches County Cork. Distributed by the Quakers to families with nothing left.
The bond holds down the centuries.
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In 1992, Irish people walk the 600-mile Trail of Tears and raise $170,000 for famine relief in Somalia. One thousand dollars for every dollar the Choctaw gave in 1847.
In 2020, when COVID devastates the Navajo Nation, Irish people donate millions in return.
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A Choctaw representative once called their 1847 gift to Ireland "a sacred memory."
The Irish Taoiseach visiting Choctaw Nation said: these people were still recovering from their own injustice, and they put their hands in their pockets and helped strangers.
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