Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day…stateside!

This week we’re heading to visit with our colleagues and contributors in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma as part of our research for ‘Sharing Lands’. Dr Shelley Angelie Saggar, postdoctoral researcher on the project, speaks to Dr Padraig Kirwan, Principal Investigator on the project about his hopes for the visit ahead of his travels in our latest blog post.

Preparations are underway for our first research visit of 2025, which will take the team to the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and to New York City for a fortnight of interviews and events. 

We’re kicking things off with a visit to the Choctaw Cultural Center in Calera, Oklahoma, where we’ve been invited to the Choctaw-Irish Friendship Festival that’s taking place over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Next up is an invitation to the Choctaw-Ireland Connections event on 15th March, where we’ll be guests of the Chahta Foundation. We’ll be meeting with Choctaw Nation leadership and alumni of the Choctaw-Ireland scholarship initiative. We’re especially grateful to the Chahta Foundation’s Director, Ms. Angela Palmer, and everyone at the Foundation for the kind invitation.

I’m also looking ahead to later this spring, where I’ll be participating in the annual Choctaw Trail of Tears bike ride. This takes place in May and is an annual commemoration of the tribe’s history of forced migration that led them to Oklahoma.

The first full week of research will comprise the bulk of our fieldwork. We’ll be conducting interviews with citizens of the Nation from March 19th. We’re deeply indebted to Ian Thompson, Judy Allen, Christy Sapulpa, Carey Fuller and everyone at the Chahta Center and Tribal Headquarters for helping us to organise these.

The Oklahoma leg of our trip closes with a visit to Tuskahoma and the capital of the Choctaw Nation. Then it’s on to New York, where first of all we’re meeting with Dr Elizabeth Stack, the Executive Director of the American Irish Historical Society. We’ll be conducting research and interviewing project contacts from 21-24th March. Our time in the States will culminate with an evening event at the American Irish Historical Society, where we’ll be speaking about our plans and ambitions for ‘Sharing Lands’ over the coming year.

This visit is very much about developing the connections and plans that we established on our last visit in October 2024. We’ve continued these conversations with colleagues and friends which has translated into the organisation of our upcoming itinerary and the tangible activities that we are looking forward to participating in. On this visit we’ll also be thinking about the best opportunities to visit with folks who hold the story of the Gift and how best to reach new audiences in Oklahoma, Texas, New York and beyond).

Whilst our previous trip involved setting up collaborative plans behind the scenes, this month’s visit is about translating these plans into action in partnership with citizens of the Choctaw Nation, members of the Irish and Irish-American community, and our various other project partners such as the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Irish Heritage Trust, Consulate of Ireland, and the American Irish Historical Society. We are hoping to conduct at least half of the project interviews over the next two weeks (an ambitious, albeit achievable plan!) It’s certainly going to be a packed programme, but it’s one that I hope will help us to celebrate the legacy of the Choctaw Gift through building these relationships and generating new perspectives, conversations, and initiatives. The Gift is a historical reality, but it is also very much a living entity – as can be seen in the ongoing programmes of reciprocity and friendship between the Choctaw Nation and the Irish that can be seen today. 
We are excited about meeting folks across our various research locations who might want to contribute their stories through podcasts, blogs, and social media. Whether it’s by talking to alumni of the Chahta Foundation’s Choctaw-Ireland Scholarship Programme who have spent time at University College Cork, meeting with Elders who have been telling and hearing the story of the Gift for many years, or discussing the significance of Irish-American connections in the twenty-first century, our team are all conscious that we will learn much about the Gift’s continuing resonances as well as about how our principles of belonging, friendship, and sharing work in practice. For me, I feel that by coming together to tell and re-tell the story of the Gift, we honour our ancestral and historical connection, but we also deepen and extend it as we plan new ways to explore and consider the meaning of the Choctaw Gift to the Irish in our daily lives.