In Each Other's Shadows

‘In each other’s shadows’: Behind Irish outpouring of relief for Navajo

• By Harry Bruinius Staff writer

New York

My husband showed me an article from The Christian Science Monitor, May 13 issue, this week that really touched us. If only we could all be this kind and thoughtful.

Cassandra Begay felt a quiet sense of awe earlier this month when she and other Navajo and Hopi women watched their COVID-19 fundraiser begin to double, inexplicably, in less than a week.

The women’s relief effort, launched in mid-March, had already been quite successful, she says, raising about $1.3 million to provide food and water for the most vulnerable living in their nations’ remote communities – who have been among those most afflicted by the coronavirus pandemic across the United States.

“Then one of my teammates, she’s like, ‘Hey, guys, we’re all of the sudden receiving a flood of donations from Ireland!’” says Ms. Begay, a Navajo activist who’s been handling the team’s communications. “And so we’re, like, ‘What’s going on? Why us? Why is a whole country all of the sudden donating to us?’”

There were thousands of unfamiliar names appearing on the team’s GoFundMe page – the first names Siobhán, Padraig, and Aoife, or surnames O’Leary, McMullen, and Gallagher – each donating small amounts from across the Atlantic. Many posted a common Irish proverb: Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine, which means, “In each other’s shadows the people live.” 

The women soon learned why the donations, now at more than $3.6 million, were pouring in: After hearing about their fundraiser, many people in Ireland recalled a moment from their own history more than 170 years ago. Another tribe of America’s first peoples, the Choctaw, raised $170 (about $5,000 in today’s dollars) and sent it to starving Irish families during the Potato Famine in 1847.

“I’m sure Ireland received all sorts of donations from around the world back then, but that’s the one that has stuck with us,” says Maria Ferrell, an Irish writer living in London. “It’s one of those stories that we have about a people who were there for us when we were weak and powerless and alone. They helped us, and now we’re friends forever.”

A different people whose ancestral lands were over 1,200 miles from the Hopi’s and Navajo’s, the Choctaw collected their modest donation just a few years after the infamous Trail of Tears, when the U.S. government forcibly removed them from their ancestral lands across the South, killing thousands.  

“I think the gift touched and stayed with Irish people so much, basically because it wasn’t charity. It was an act of solidarity,” Ms. Ferrell says. “The Choctaw people, they were giving it to us because they saw us, they recognized us and our plight as being similar to theirs.”

COVID-19 crisis has affected Native peoples across the U.S. in disproportionate numbers. The Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico, with a population of about 330,000, now has more coronavirus cases per capita than any state, according to the Navajo health agency. 

Given how infectious diseases brought over from Europe, such as the measles and smallpox, wiped out large swaths of native populations, many observers say the outsize effects of COVID-19 today on Native peoples are particularly poignant. 

More than a third of their nation’s members have no running water or electricity The area is also considered a food desert, with only 13 grocery stores serving more than 180,000 people. Even before the lockdown, unemployment hovered around 50%.

But one of the most critical problems on Navajo lands has been the lack of health care infrastructure. The situation has become so dire that the international relief agency Doctors Without Borders, which serves poverty stricken and war-torn areas throughout the world, sent a delegation of health care workers to the United States for the first time. 

Ms. Begay’s grandmother is among those living without running water and electricity. Her best friend contracted the virus, too, she says. Unable to see him face to face, she’s been leaving meals and bouquets of flowers near his front door. 

“It’s been heartbreaking, but it’s also been – it feels good to come from a place of strength and compassion and grace for our people,” Ms. Begay says through tears. “And for me personally – I get emotional about this, because I know this is a dark time for us – but, you know, with the outpouring of support from the Irish people because of what the Choctaw ancestors did 173 years ago – it’s so good to be a part of that history, a positive part of that history.”

Her people have a concept similar to that in the Irish proverb appearing on their fundraising site, she says, a spiritual idea called K’é. 

“It’s about the importance of honoring the sacredness of our relations to each other,” she says. “It’s the principal belief that where we come from – our family, our community, our nation, as well as our relations with other people, and not only just humans, but of all things – it’s a sacred relationship.” 

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“But I know that I won’t have any regrets from this part of my life and in this time of history,” she continues. “With the outpouring of support from our Irish friends because of what the Choctaw ancestors did 173 years ago ... it’s something we’ll always remember, and our children will remember, and there will come a day when we will pay it forward, too.”

What can we do? How can we help?