How the Choctaw and Irish found kinship in adversity

Today I’d like to share a story of hope. It’s a true story that still reverberates to this day – like all historical stories do I suppose, because history was once right now, and the present an unknowable future.

The Choctaw people of Oklahoma, US, have had a hard time over the years, as have the rest of the US’ first nations, and countless ethnic groups across the planet.

Though falling under the umbrella of the young United States, the Choctaw remained a self-sustaining tribe, prosperous in their own right, and peaceable. But they had land.

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Between 1831 and 1833, through treaty, bribery and bad faith, the Choctaw were forcibly relocated from their traditional lands in the American Deep South to designated reservations in Oklahoma, in an ethnic cleansing now remembered as the Trail of Tears.

During the removal, over 2 500 of the 15 000 members died due to the bitter winter blizzards, failed crops, and cholera.

The years that followed remained riven with hardships, but across the Atlantic a new trauma was unfolding in the island nation of Ireland, also colonised, her people also pushed off their own land. The Great Famine (1845-1852) would ultimately kill one million Irish and force another million to emigrate.

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Far away, the Choctaw heard about this Irish devastation so like their own and, in 1847, they collected upwards of $170 – over $5 000 today – towards the relief efforts, sending it to Midleton in County Cork, despite their own ongoing suffering. Over a century later this selfless act came to light and a new kinship was born.

In 1995, then Irish president Mary Robinson visited the Choctaw in gratitude. In 2017, a silver feather statue was erected in Midleton.

In 2018, the Irish government set up a scholarship scheme for Choctaw students to study in Ireland. Then, in 2020, as the Covid pandemic ravaged America’s first people, Ireland donated hefty aid funds, with the Choctaw’s earlier generosity in mind.

Last week, a silver Celtic trinity statue was unveiled on Choctaw land, a shining heart symbol never ending…

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It’s about looking back, and paying forward; it’s a lesson about what we do now unfolding in the future, and how our great grandchildren may one day seek rest under the trees grown from the seeds we unwittingly planted.

So let’s not plant weeds.