A relay race runner hands-off the baton.

Recognizing the Greater Need

During the 1830s, Native Americans were legally evicted by the U.S. government from their ancestral home and were forced to walk nearly 1,000 miles to a new home in a place they had never been before.

Thousands of people died on the harsh and totally unnecessary journey. At the time, American soldiers called it the most brutal decision in the history of American warfare. It was quite simply the worst human rights violation by a sitting American president: Martin Van Buren.

Why? Gold! It was always about the gold and the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations were at the epicenter. In 1829, a newspaper in Georgia proclaimed that a ton of gold had been found in the North Georgia mountains. Almost instantly, the state was flooded with gold seekers known as the “great intrusion.” Within months, President Van Buren’s proclamation evicting Native Americans was issued.

By 1847, seventeen thousand Choctaw Nation finally settled in Oklahoma after being forced from the tribe’s native land during the Trail of Tears. White soldiers, dubbed “Wasi’chu” (takers of the fat), did the dirty work.

Despite the racial tension between Native Americans and their “blue-eyed-devil” abusers, in an incredible act of generosity, Choctaw chiefs collected donations for Ireland which was simultaneously being devastated by the nineteenth century potato famine. Such selflessness in the face of suffering sparked a 175-year bond between Native American and Ireland.