KINDRED SPIRITS

by Aidan Feerick, B.A., M.A.G.I

Just outside Midleton, Co Cork is a remarkable sculpture. It consists of 9, six metre, stainless steel feathers arranged in a circle around a bowl representing the gift of food. It commemorates a donation made by the Choctaw Nation in 1847 to the Irish Famine Relief Fund. The sculpture is called Kindred Spirits.
The circumstances in which the donation was made are illuminating. Before they were forcibly removed by the US government from their homeland in America’s deep south to their designated new lands in the state of Oklahoma, so many members of the Choctaw Nation suffered and died on that forced march. This displacement of native American tribes from their original homelands to make way for white settlers has often been described as a Trail of Tears. It is quite evident now what had happened; native American tribes were ethnically cleansed by the US government between 1830 and 1850 under the Indian Removal Acts.
7,000 Choctaw were removed from their homelands in Alabama and Louisiana and about 5,000 died on the forced march to Oklahoma; the Choctaw elders described this forced march as a Trail of Tears and Death.It is indeed astounding how, in spite of their own sufferings and displacement, news of the potato blight in Ireland and subsequent famine reached them: this displaced Nation were deeply moved; they collected and contributed $170 dollars to aid and assist the starving Irish people.
The Irish could not respond in 1847 but the erection of this striking sculpture shows that we are indeed kindred spirits having passed through our own trail of tears, death and displacement.