Document Type
Research Project
Publication Date
Spring 2023
Faculty Sponsor
Kendra Smith-Howard
Course
AHIS 489Z
Abstract
In 1847, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma donated $173 dollars to an Irish Potato Famine relief fund during the potato blight, which, intersecting with an era of British oppression, resulted in about 1 million Irish dying of starvation and other hunger-related diseases. Only 15 years before, the Choctaw had been forced to relocate 500 miles, by foot, along the Trail of Tears, starting in their ancestral homeland in Mississippi and ending in what is now called Oklahoma. It is estimated that they lost about ⅓ of their population along this journey. In this thesis, I explore why a nation not at all positioned to act philanthropically gave to another suffering nation, despite being in the throes of rebuilding and recovering their own. Deviating from prior scholarship, I use the significance of the founding of Choctaw and Cherokee-run newspapers at the time of the gift, combined with the Choctaw concept of ima—to give—to better understand this act. It was not simply one of political protest or resistance against global colonial oppression, although both of those motivations were relevant. Rather, it was a complex act of cultural preservation that fit into a larger movement to keep Choctaw culture and values alive during an era of deliberate erasure, oppression, and genocide
Recommended Citation
Gaffney, Sophia, "Resistance through Existence: The Choctaw Gift to the Starving Irish in 1847 as an Act of Agency Assertion and Cultural Preservation" (2023). Library Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. 6.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/lib_award_undergrad/6
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Gaffney Reflective Essay
gaffney, bibliography.pdf (94 kB)
Gaffney Bibliography
