Sharing Lands

Sharing Lands: Reconciliation, Recognition, & Reciprocity

The remarkable story of the $172 sent by members of the Choctaw tribe to the starving in Ireland during the Great Famine in 1847 is often told. Despite that fact, both the details surrounding the connection between the Choctaw Nation and the people of Ireland and the gift’s legacy has been greatly understudied. This project will address that gap and will be a transdisciplinary and transatlantic study of the enduring relationship between the Choctaw Nation and Ireland. 

The ‘Sharing Lands’ project team consists of Dr Padraig Kirwan, Professor LeAnne Howe, Professor Gillian O’Brien and Dr Shelley Angelie Saggar. The team are internationally recognised experts in the fields of Indigenous Studies, Literary Studies, Irish Famine Studies and Public History. 

Meaning

Rooted in the Choctaw concept of ima (giving), the project considers the gift’s expression of core Indigenous values as well as models of sharing and collective wellbeing. It also examines the ways in which Choctaw traditions have led to moments of empathy, recognition, and international alliance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

Context

The historical context of this remarkable donation to the Irish is important. The tribe’s donation was dispatched soon after Choctaw Removal to Indian Territory in the mid-1830s which had caused huge distress, suffering and land loss. In Ireland many had also experienced numerous privations caused by colonial expansion. It is also a tragic fact that many Irish born migrants and Irish-America settlers – President Andrew Jackson amongst them – would go on to play a large part in expansionist U.S. policies during the 1830s and beyond.

‘Sharing Lands’ will look to the future as well as the past. The enduring impact of the Choctaw gift can be used as a way to investigate issues surrounding collective trauma and Indigenous responses to colonisation. Moreover, the critical (re)assessment of this story, as well as the memorialisation, commemoration and celebration of it in the twenty-first century, underlines not only Choctaw resilience, but also the potential for recovery and reconciliation, both within and between communities.

Finally, set against a backdrop of famine and removal, in the first instance, as well as forms of sustenance
and sharing, in the second, the donation might prompt audiences to consider questions relating to
immigration, internationalism and belonging, patterns of inter-relationality and reciprocity during times of
crisis and catastrophic change, and the ethics of production and consumption, especially around food
sustainability.

Project Goals

Collectively and collaboratively ‘Sharing Lands’ will:

Examine

how Indigenous ways of knowing, and specifically the tradition of ima (giving), demonstrate the importance of sustained, reciprocal relationships; and have led to international and intergenerational connectedness, especially between the Choctaw and the people of Ireland;

Explore

collaboratively the oral history of the gift and consider shared narratives within the context of specific landscape traditions, lived realities, and histories;

Engage

audiences in the U.S., Ireland, and Britain to investigate specific intercultural points of connection while also examining the long history of colonialism and contributing to decolonising activities;

Record

a series of podcasts that will tell stories of the Choctaw-Irish connection and how these connections have had an impact on history, literature and art.

Produce

an open access archive of interviews,  education packs for primary and secondary educators, and a travelling ‘Sharing Lands’ exhibition

Initiate

crucial conversations with policymakers and the public about emigration, immigration, and citizenship.

Gillian O’ Brien

Professor of Public History at Liverpool John Moores University

Padraig Kirwan

Reader in the Literature of the Americas at Goldsmiths, University of London

LeAnne Howe

Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature at the University of Georgia

Shelley Angelie Saggar

Postdoctoral Researcher, Goldsmiths, University of London

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