Donations to native American tribes who have been badly hit by the coronavirus crisis are flooding in from Ireland as they repay a debt dating back to the 19th-century potato famine.
At least 41 people have fallen victim to Covid-19 in the Navajo nation, with the spike in cases partly attributed to a water crisis. An estimated 40 percent of the Navajo do not have running water at home, and a drought in the south-west has exacerbated the difficulties.
As the crisis intensified, the Navajo and Hopi families set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise cash to pay for bottled water.
Already more than $1.3 million has been raised with donations flooding in from Ireland. The generosity dates back to a gesture made in March 1847 when the Choctaw Tribe, which was gradually re-establishing itself in Oklahoma having been ousted from its ancestral lands in Mississippi, heard news of the Irish Potato Famine across the Atlantic….