Donations For Native Americans Flood In From Irish People, Returning A Historic Favor From 1847

At the height of the Irish potato famine, members of the Choctaw Nation banded together to donate $170—more than $5,000 today—toward relief efforts, selflessly contributing despite their own hardships.

During a March 23, 1847, meeting in Skullyville, Oklahoma, “they were asked to dig deep for a group of people they had never met,” wrote Natasha Frost for Atlas Obscura in 2018. “And, incredibly, they did.”

Now, as the United States’ Native American community navigates the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of Irish people are making charitable donations to return the Choctaw’s 173-year-old favor, report Ed O’Loughlin and Mihir Zaveri for the New York Times.

As of this writing, an online fundraiser benefitting the Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation has raised more than $2.5 million for water, food and health supplies. Irish donors have contributed around half a million dollars (and counting), the GoFundMe campaign’s organizers tell CNN’s Harmeet Kaur.

Many of these donors have specifically cited the Choctaw’s 1847 gift. One Pat Hayes, for instance, wrote, “From Ireland, 170 years later, the favour is returned! To our Native American brothers and sisters in your moment of hardship.”

Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, tells the Times that his tribe is “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.”

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