“Beggars and peasants assembled for Indian meal, July 1847” Nation Library of Ireland.
Last summer, The Repatriation Files recounted the story of how in March of 1847, members of the Choctaw Nation in Scullyville, Oklahoma started a fund-raiser for the people of Ireland, who were suffering through the dreadful Famine. The $170 they raised that day and sent to the Irish has been calculated to be the equivalent of over $ 4,000 today—an amazing act of generosity from a community just ten years after their own removal from their homelands to the east by the US government.
Now the Republic of Ireland has established a scholarship to support Choctaw students who wish to study in Ireland.
The Irish Times reports that Leo Varadker, the Republic of Ireland’s leader (a post known as Taoiseach) recently outlined the program in a public speech in which he said the Choctaw Gift had “never been, and never will be, forgotten in Ireland.” (Read more)
“This is an opportunity for us to learn from you and from your culture, and you from ours, in a sharing of knowledge that will enrich both our peoples.”
To read more about the Choctaw Gift, see “Remembering the Choctaw Gift.”