Since being awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2024, the Sharing Lands team have been hard at work planning the details of the project and deepening our connections with our collaborators.
We have spent the past year meeting with our colleagues in the Choctaw Nation – especially the Choctaw Cultural Center and the Chahta Foundation – as well as the Irish Heritage Trust, the American Irish Historical Society, and the Consulate General of Ireland. Learning from our colleagues has allowed us to appreciate the depth and scope of the connection between the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the people of Ireland more than ever.
Over the next 24 months we will be working on several fronts, and in numerous locations across Ireland, Oklahoma, New York, Texas, and the United Kingdom. The Sharing Lands project team (Padraig Kirwan, LeAnne Howe, Gillian O’Brien and Shelley Angelie Saggar) will work together with our project partners to explore the ongoing gift that is the enduring relationship between the Choctaw and the Irish.
Sharing Lands considers the ways that communities and sovereign nations can share their values, their strength, their experiences, and their hope for the future with others. We believe that reciprocity and connectedness as well as diplomacy and friendship can be some of the most important guiding influences in our world today, and we plan to celebrate and examine the possibilities that arise out of such a belief.
We invite you to join us on this journey. Keep up to date with our plans and activities on X and Bluesky as we embark on the next phase of the project.
Sharing Lands 