Gratitude: Honouring Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee & Wendat Irish Famine Aid

Published: April 14, 2024, noon

Claudette Commanda; Mark McGowan; Eamonn McKee; Nathan Brinklow, Eleanor McGrath The Irish Famine (1846-1852) was one of the most traumatic events in modern Irish history. With the repeated failure of the potato crop, upon which two-thirds of Ireland\u2019s 8 million people depended, the social and economic fabric of Irish life was torn to pieces. By the early 1850s, one million people had perished from hunger or disease and another 1.5 million simply left Ireland. One of the unsung episodes of the Famine was the donation of $170 (the figure is disputed) or about $6,300 USD in today\u2019s currency, from the Choctaw Nation in the USA to Irish relief. There is much irony in this act of generosity from the Choctaw. They themselves were destitute having been forced to relocate from their traditional lands in the southeastern United States, to the designated \u201cIndian Territory\u201d in present day Oklahoma. What has gone virtually unheralded in Canadian history is similar gifts made by the Canada\u2019s Indigenous peoples to Irish migrants who arrived in Canada, fleeing the famine. In 1847, the traditional Haudenosaune territory of Hochelaga, then Montreal, was the scene of tremendous suffering and death. Afflicted with typhus and other serious infections, thousands of Irish migrants were herded into hastily built sheds at Point St. Charles, just east of the downtown area. The Mohawk Nation of Kahnawake, south of the city on the St. Lawrence River, immediately responded to the Irish, bringing food from their lands to the fever sheds. In fact, Canada\u2019s Irish soon became part of the vanguard of settler-colonial \u201cnation building.\u201d In Ireland, however, both the Lord Mayors of Dublin and Belfast have come to Canada to formally thank the Mohawk people for their great generosity in Ireland\u2019s time of need. For her part Mohawk Chief Zachary-Deom, remarked during a Famine commemoration in Montreal, that the Haudenosaune and the Irish shared many qualities\u2014they are \u201cresilient, determined, and tough people.\u201d The generosity of the Haudenosaune of Montreal was but the tip of a much larger iceberg of donations that have been left unrecognized by historians. Other Indigenous peoples, sometimes prompted by colonial authorities, made similar, if not greater donations.