Irish dig deep to support virus-hit native Americans, repaying 150-year-old debt

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Great story....

Irish dig deep to support virus-hit native Americans, repaying 150-year-old debt

https://news.yahoo.com/irish-dig-deep-support-virus-201156553.html 

Donations to native American tribes who have been badly hit by the coronavirus crisis are flooding in from Ireland as they repay a debt dating back to the 19th-century potato famine. 

At least 41 people have fallen victim to Covid-19 in the Navajo nation, with the spike in cases partly attributed to a water crisis. An estimated 40 percent of the Navajo do not have running water at home, and a drought in the south-west has exacerbated the difficulties.  

Already more than $1.3 million has been raised with donations flooding in from Ireland. The generosity dates back to a gesture made in March 1847 when the Choctaw Tribe, which was gradually re-establishing itself in Oklahoma having been ousted from its ancestral lands in Mississippi, heard news of the Irish Potato Famine across the Atlantic. 

Meeting in a building in Skullyville, Oklahoma, the Choctaw were asked to dig deep for people thousands of miles away they had never met. They did, and donations poured in. 

Now, 173 years later, the gesture has been repaid with donors from Ireland opening their wallets to help.