"Go raibh maith agat", "Eire remembers. Mile buiochas "," From Ireland, 170 years later, the favor is returned! " or "With love from Ireland"… On the page of the Navajo & Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund’s GoFundMe fundraising site, messages of support and encouragement follow one another, in English but also in Gaelic.
Launched on March 18 by the Rural Utah Project Education Fund, this relief fund uses crowdfunding. It is intended to help the families of the Amerindian peoples of North America Navajo and Hopi, very hard hit by the coronavirus due in particular to their very precarious living conditions. The Navajo Nation has one of the highest Covid-19 prevalence rates in the United States. As of Wednesday, May 6, donations reached more than $ 2.4 million (approximately 2.2 million euros).
In recent days, many of these donors have had Irish-sounding names. "Several recent donations refer to the great famine in Ireland of 1845", said Vanessa Tulley, one of the leaders of this project, on Monday. Nearly 170 years ago, the arrival of downy mildew on the island ravaged potato crops, causing the death of a million people between 1845 and 1852. This famine triggered an unprecedented wave of departures, notably to America: in ten years, Ireland lost a quarter of its population, falling from 8 to 6 million.
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First mediatized humanitarian crisis
This humanitarian catastrophe had repercussions as far as the United States and provoked a little-known solidarity movement. This famine was indeed one of the first publicized humanitarian crises. Funds poured in from the Calcutta garrison, Sing Sing prison (New York), former British slaves from Jamaica, Barbados or Saint Kitts and Nevis, or convicts on a prison ship in London . But also of Amerindian peoples.
In March 1847, the Choctaw Nation managed to raise 170 dollars (around 4,500 euros today) to help the Irish. These funds were first sent to the Memphis Irish Relief Committee, then to the General Irish Relief Committee of New York City, from where they came to Ireland.
The Choctaw decided to launch this collection after having themselves gone through the "Trail of Tears" test, which refers to their forced eviction between 1831 and 1838 from Mississippi to Oklahoma, while their land was turned over to European settlers under the Indian Removal Act.
"We have become soul mates"
Some 170 years later, Irish citizens have therefore decided to come to the aid of two other Amerindian nations devastated by the pandemic. Gary Batton, Chief of the Choctaw Nation, said his tribe was "Happy – and not at all surprised – to learn that the Irish in turn come to the aid of the Navajo and Hopi nations. We have become soul mates with the Irish since the “potato famine”. We hope that the Irish, the Navajo and the Hopi will develop lasting friendships, as we have done. "
Since then, the bond between Ireland and the American Indians has never broken down. In 1919 Eamon de Valera, considered the "father" of the Republic of Ireland, was appointed honorary chief by the Ojibwe-Chippewa tribe (who lives between Michigan and Montana, in the United States, and the western Quebec east of Ontario, Canada), who saw in him the "Representative of one oppressed nation to another".
Eamon de Valera wearing native American ceremonial head-dress. de Valera was made Chief of a Chippewa tribe at a Wi… https://t.co/QgfasNH4pl
Diarmaid Ferriter, historian at University College Dublin and co-author, with writer Colm Toibin, of the book The Irish Famine, recalls that the memory of the Choctaw donation was rekindled during the commemoration of 150e anniversary of the Great Famine in 1995. Mary Robinson, the President of the Republic of Ireland, then visited the Choctaw Islands to thank them.
In 2017, a large stainless steel sculpture was unveiled in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland, called "Kindred Spirits" (brother spirits), to symbolize this common history. The following year, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar also visited Oklahoma to announce a scholarship program for members of the Choctaw community to study in Ireland. "Famine has never been forgotten, and it has made the Irish more likely to make common cause with other marginalized people"sums up the historian.
Vanessa Tulley, a member of the Rural Utah Project Education Fund, wrote on May 3 on the GoFuMe page: "This is a dark time in history for our nation (…). The acts of generosity of our ancestors are thanked almost 200 years later. "
Native Americans severely affected by the pandemic
With a population of 170,000, the Navajo Nation has recorded 2,474 confirmed cases and 73 deaths from the coronavirus and authorities fear that the peak of infections is yet to come. According to epidemiologists, the high prevalence of diseases such as asthma, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes, the scarcity of running water – the groundwater has been polluted by the extraction of uranium which has been used to build the nuclear arsenal of the United States – and the coexistence within each household of several generations allowed the virus to spread with exceptional speed.
The collection of these funds should allow the establishment of a network of distribution points for food, water and soap, and essential supplies, 38% of the inhabitants of the reserve living below the poverty line.
Beyond the Navajo and Hopi communities, the Guardian reports that in many states, Amerindians are not counted in demographic statistics measuring the impact of the coronavirus on different communities: they do not fall into a specific category such as whites, blacks, Latinos or Asians, but in the "other" category.
Arizona Health Services has reported that Native Americans account for 16% of Covid-19 deaths in the state, although they account for only 6% of the population. In New Mexico, Native Americans represent less than 10% of the population but more than a third of the cases of Covid-19. NBC News also reports that the Seattle Indian Health Board requested tests from the city's public health department and instead received … body bags.
