Closing Thought–07May20
In 1847 during the Irish famine the Choctaw Nation reached out and help as best they could…..
There’s a sculpture in Midleton, Ireland, made up of oversized steel eagle feathers — they’re 20 feet tall — arranged in a circle, kind of like a bowl. The structure honors historic ties between the Irish and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
The bond between the Choctaw and the Irish goes back more than 170 years to the potato famine in Ireland — one of the worst famines in history — when the potato crop failed over consecutive years. Over 1 million people died, and the crisis prompted one of the first worldwide relief efforts.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-18/choctaw-oklahoma-stepped-help-irish-during-potato-famine
The Covid-19 is literally killing the NAs….the Navajo are being hit hard and government help is delayed……
Native American tribes are being starved of federal aid more than a month after the Coronavirus Aid, Recovery and Economic Security (CARES) Act was signed into law even as COVID-19 infection rates on tribal lands across the United States are continuing to rise. On a per capita basis the outbreak among the Navajo Nation across the US Southwest is almost as severe those of New York and New Jersey.
The CARES Act, the largest stimulus package in American history with about $2.5 trillion set for allocation, will act as a slush fund for the country’s corporate and financial aristocracy to continue to loot the working class to prop up Wall Street. As the World Socialist Web Site has noted, the “wolves guarding the hen house” will oversee a vast transfer of wealth to the ruling class, eclipsing that of the 2008 bailout.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/02/nav2-m02.html
Some NAs get body bags instead of needed supplies….
A Seattle-area Native American health center in April received body bags instead of requested equipment to handle the coronavirus in what tribal officials described as a “metaphor” for how the Indigenous population is being treated by local, state, and federal governments around the country as the pandemic continues to rage.
“My question is: Are we going to keep getting body bags or are we going to get what we actually need?” Seattle Indian Health Board chief research officer Abigail Echo-Hawk told NBC News.
…….and now Ireland tries to return the generosity….
At the height of the Great Famine in Ireland, help arrived from an unexpected source: Members of the Choctaw Nation raised $170, the equivalent of more than $5,000 in today’s money, for famine relief in 1847, despite being impoverished and dispossessed by the “Trail of Tears” forced relocations. Now, 173 years later, the Irish are repaying the favor by helping Native American tribes hit hard by the pandemic, reports Time. A GoFundMe fundraiser to supply food and clean water to people in the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Reservation has raised almost $2 million, and organizers say many of the 34,000 donors are Irish. Issues including overcrowded housing and a shortage of health care facilities have made Native American communities especially at risk from the pandemic, reports CBS.
“I’d already known what the Choctaw did in the famine, so short a time after they’d been through the Trail of Tears,” Cork resident Sean Callahan tells the New York Times. “It always struck me for its kindness and generosity and I see that too in the Irish people. It seemed the right time to try and pay it back in kind.” In Ireland, a sculpture of eagle feathers was erected in 2017 to commemorate the Choctaws’ generosity. Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, says the tribe was ” 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.”
Thank you to Ireland for helping the NAs something the government seems not to want to do……
A sad story is that a fund raising took place to help those countries that have extreme poverty to help with this pandemic…..$8 billion has been raised and not one dime from the US…..
President Donald Trump’s brand of “America First” isolationism was on full display Monday as the U.S. declined to participate in a international pledge drive which raised more than $8 billion during its kick-event to create a global fund to develop and deploy diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is a pity the U.S. is not a part of it,” Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, whose country pledged $1 billion to the effort, told Reuters. “When you are in a crisis, you manage it and you do it jointly with others.”
How truly sad is that?
Be Well…..Be Safe…..
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”