Irish leader visits and thanks Choctaw Native American community for their generosity to Ireland during the Great Famine

Ireland's Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is undertaking his customary visit to the United States this week ahead of the St Patrick's day celebrations. Today he will be visiting the Choctaw Native Americans in Durant, Oklahoma. He will thank the Native American community for a remarkable act of kindness, when, in 1847, at the height of the Great Famine, the Choctaw community sent $170 to Ireland to help the poor and the starving. This at a time when the native American people's own position was very precarious. America’s indigenous inhabitants were suffering brutal forced displacement with incidents of massacre that have forever left a stain on American history. Despite this, on March 23, 1847, the Indians of the Choctaw nation took up an amazing collection and raised $170 for Irish Famine relief, at the time worth in the tens of thousands of dollars today. 

The Great Famine in Ireland was a period of mass starvation, disease, and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. During the famine, about one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland. However, it is the British government's (who then ruled Ireland) response that continues to be highlighted when looking at this catastrophic chapter of Irish history. Over this period of mass starvation and disease the export of food crops and livestock from Ireland continued. In 1997, the then British Prime Minister, issued a statement in which he apologised to the Irish people and blamed "those who governed in London" at the time for the disaster.

Picture: Kindred Spirits scuplture in Bailick Park, Midleton, Ireland, commemorating 1847 donation by the Native American Choctaw People to Irish famine