Irish return a 173-year-old favor by helping Native Americans battling coronavirus

The Irish are returning a 173-yeard-old favor to a Native American tribe.

An online fundraiser collecting coronavirus relief for the Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation has been flooded with donations from Ireland. Residents said the charity was inspired by the $170 in support the Choctaw Nation sent to starving Irish families during the potato famine in 1847.

“The English oppressors and the ruling elite in Ireland were indifferent to the millions of starving Irish people,” wrote contributor Kris Marsden. “Yet the native Americans who were also subjected to extreme poverty and privation donated to people who were thousands of miles away and probably never heard of the Choctaw.”

Another donator, Padraic Forkan, added, “You helped us in our darkest hour. Honored to return the kindness. Ireland remembers, with thanks.”

More than $2.2 million has been raised toward the $3 million goal of the fundraiser — with hundreds of donations pouring in from Ireland, organizers told The New York Times.

“The Choctaw ancestors planted that seed a long time ago, based off the same fundamental belief of helping someone else,” Cassandra Begay, a member of the Navajo Nation and co-organizer of the fundraiser. “It is a dark time for us. The support from Ireland, another country, is phenomenal.”

Begay believes the Irish caught wind of the aid project through posts on Twitter, specifically citing a viral tweet from a reporter at The Irish Times on May 2.

The coronavirus has devastated indigenous people, with the Navajo Nation reporting more than 2,700 cases and 70 deaths as of Monday.

Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, told the Times in a statement Tuesday that the tribe was “gratified — and perhaps not at all surprised — to learn of the assistance our special friends, the Irish, are giving to the Navajo and Hopi Nations.”

“We have become kindred spirits with the Irish in the years since the Irish potato famine,” Batton continued. “We hope the Irish, Navajo and Hopi peoples develop lasting friendships, as we have.”

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