8 ms·

Behind Irish outpouring of relief for Navajo

274 points by conorliv1 6y ago

blendo 6y ago
I have great respect for the Navajo and Hopi people of Arizona and New Mexico.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  I have great respect for the Scottish people of Scotland.
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    I see what you did there.
  - mirimir 6y ago
    My first wife's Scottish ancestors came from Ireland.
inetsee 6y ago
When I see stories like this I wish there was some way on Hacker News that I could spend some of my karma points to give this story more than one up vote.
- Talanes 6y ago
  As someone who's still internalized pre-voting internet discussions, and just reads things without voting 99% of the time, I saw your comment and upvoted. Some real karma for you :)
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    I run a problem validation forum[1] where I'm experimenting with the karma system; one can donate karma to 'Down Vote' but not for an 'Up Vote'. 'Up Vote' privileges requires minimal karma(2), 'Down Vote' privileges are rather high(20). Karma is visible only to the owner and the moderators. Rationale being, people shouldn't be discouraged to post their problems however small or trivial it may sound and others to share possible ideas to solve that problem or existing solutions without any prejudice. Ofcourse this raises the issue of people not willing to part their karma to maintain forum sanctity, but as of now that's manageable when compared to discouragement from down votes. [1]https://needgap.com https://needgap.com
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      > Ofcourse this raises the issue of people not willing to part their karma to maintain forum sanctity, but as of now that's manageable when compared to discouragement from down votes. Not a problem on Stack Overflow. And the website is a neat concept too.
    - pas 6y ago
      Slashdot used probabilistic anonymized meta-moderation. I think that should be used to weigh people's karma. (So someone that is deemed very wise by the meta-moderators should have more "power".) I have no idea of the second order effects of this. Echo chambers are of course possible, just like without this. Maybe adding a third layer would help to reward people who help diversify and rationalize discussions, and so on.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0QH-khhr8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0QH-khhr8
1cvmask 6y ago
Hear is another similar story with a twist from English royalty: https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/generous-turkish-aid-irish-great-hunger https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/generous-turkish-...
- frabbit 6y ago
  That is particularly galling. It is interesting that the story was challenged in its totality when (ex) president Mary Robinson mentioned it during a visit to Turkey (she incorrectly stated that the heraldic coat of arms of Drogheda town contained a star-and-crescent in gratitude for this act, whereas it was the emblem of an earlier English military governor).
qwerty456127 6y ago
I've already read the story a number of times (incl. here IIRC) during the recent weeks so, despite it's cool, heart-touching and inspiring, it's nothing new. What impressed me this time, however, is the quick read / deep read switch articles on this website have. It's the first time I see such and I bloody freakin wish every website had it!
- bcoates 6y ago
  Maybe we need a little badge for articles that are inverted-pyramid compliant and you can stop reading whenever you like
ConsiderCrying 6y ago
It's always a bit sad to see people rely on the chance charity of others, even if, in most cases, these others come through. The Navajo people have been let down by the people ruling over their land (no, I don't mean the Navajo leaders.) But the Irish/Choctaw friendship is one of my favorite uplifting stories if only because it's about those who have little giving it away to people in a similar predicament. It's still sad but there's so much kindness in that gesture. I think I remember a similar story where an Indian or Shri Lankan city sent some livestock to a starving European city, but can't find anything at the moment.
MarkMc 6y ago
There is a similar story described by Robert Cialdini in his classic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [1]: "In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have been surprised to learn of a five-thousand-dollar relief donation from Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember my chin hitting my chest, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading insisted that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the Ethiopian Red Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims of that year’s earthquakes in Mexico City...Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was invaded by Italy." [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence
- pjc50 6y ago
  Extraordinary thing to happen at the time of Band Aid and the big donations from the UK to Ethiopia following the first disturbing pictures of the famine being broadcast on the news. Disturbing pictures on the news are now so routine as to be ignored .. or vanish altogether.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    More likely ignored because there's things that draw more views happening elsewhere. Hong Kong protests took over the news for a while, but then there was the Coronavirus and suddenly the Hong Kong protests seem to no longer be a thing and the people forgotten.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Are the Hong Kong protests still happening? Or did everyone stay at home during the pandemic? It looks like the situation is now "punchup in the legislature, but everyone is wearing facemasks": https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3084822/hong-kong-lawmakers-thrown-out-key-legislative-council https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3084822...
mywacaday 6y ago
In 2015 my local town erected a sculpture to commemorate the event. Maybe that's why the story is fresh in Irish memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_Spirits_(sculpture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_Spirits_(sculpture) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kindred-spirits-sculpture https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kindred-spirits-sculptur...
- doinathing 6y ago
  Seeing the donations coming in (and making one myself) I was reminded that this sculpture is the reason I know about the event in the first place and, saw the significance of the help, and felt moved to donate. It made me think a lot about how public art and the things we commemorate with public art can have a tangible impact on our actions and our beliefs.
s_dev 6y ago
I read this -- very proud of the efforts of the Irish but proud also that they didn't forget those small acts of kindness. Showing gratitude is important and I think this shows gratitude for the solidarity shown in the past. We're also aware 'Choctaw' and 'Hopi' and 'Navajo' are all different tribes and Native Americans aren't a monolithic group. It's just hard if not nigh on impossible to give back to the exact people that helped us. It's the sentiment that counts in this sense.
- hellofunk 6y ago
  The hundreds of Native American tribes of centuries past were as different from each other as they were different from European cultures. In fact the many different regions of Europe have always had much more in common with each other than the original tribes of North America had with each other.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Well, perhaps the commonality in this case is that both the Irish and the Native American tribes involved were oppressed by Anglo cultures.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
nailer 6y ago
Having an Irish dad, there's a common sense of solidarity between Irish people and other groups who are often seen as oppressed. My Dad and uncles etc. would identify with the Black Panthers, and the PLO, as and a kid (in Australia) I'd wonder why these groups that were so far away and so different were important, and they'd say something along the lines of "because they're us" - like this is the most obvious thing that anyone should know. There's good and bad here (there's a tendency to see the world as 'oppressor' and 'oppressed'), but it comes from good intentions.
- patrickk 6y ago
  A similar dynamic is at play with Celtic fans (historically Catholic football club in Glasgow) and support for Palestine. https://medium.com/@JohnWight1/celtic-football-fans-and-why-palestine-matters-997c009d035d https://medium.com/@JohnWight1/celtic-football-fans-and-why-...
aclimatt 6y ago
Since the article only very lightly touches on it and some may be understandably confused about the "solidarity" between the Irish and Native Americans, the "Potato Famine" was only so deadly in Ireland to the Irish due to years of colonial rule -- not because the only food in Ireland were rotten potatoes. Ireland had plenty of food at the time. They even continued to export food to England. It's just that due to systematic oppression, Irish natives couldn't afford anything that weren't (now blighted) potatoes. That's where the parallel comes from with the Native Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
- patrickk 6y ago
  The Whig party's laissez-faire economic ideology and the belief that Divine providence was punishing the lazy natives[1] were major factors explaining why the famine was so severe compared to previous blights. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml#five http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...
  - bcoates 6y ago
    Eeeh, this kind of looks like a British apologetic that ignores the whole "hundreds of years of colonial occupation" thing they were doing at the time. Blaming the whigs for a technical agricultural policy point they were probably right about [1] while waving off the background of extractive colonialism that created the dependency on the potato crop is a little convenient [1] when there's famine due to economic shortfall in a country with an agricultural economy, agriculture policy interventions like food dumping and banning exports can make things worse by collapsing the economy. if you want to help, don't send rules send money
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- jajag 6y ago
  A more accurate portrayal of the situation is to say that Ireland of the time was a state whose economy depended on the export of premium food products - cattle, dairy & grain - whilst the majority of the population were subsistence tenant farmers who grew that produce in order to pay for their farm tenancies, whilst growing a side crop of potatoes in order to sustain themselves. When the potato blight occurred, they were still expected to pay their farm rents using the produce they produced despite this leaving them without a food crop for their own sustenance. Despite what's believed from the common narrative, most of the landlords, middlemen and exporters facilitating the trade and export of food from Ireland at this time were Irish, and many were Catholics; and they were operating within an economic system were these actions made sense. As they would have seen it, stopping the export of food stuffs would have caused economic collapse. In a modern state with well developed central government, the state would have been able to step in and take appropriate actions. But governments of the 1840s simply didn't have the scope of action available to a modern government, or the necessary vision of their role to accompany that. The result was a tragedy of truly enormous proportions, and which certainly more could have been done to avoid; but to suggest that it was simply due to 'systematic oppression' is to greatly simplify the divisions that existed within Irish society at the time, or the motivations of those involved.
youngNed 6y ago
As is the case in a lot of discussion that touches on Irish History, in this thread there are a lot of really bad takes - for anyone interested in a good, well balanced, summary delivered by experts in under an hour - i really recommend the BBC 'In Our Time' podcast on this subject - as with all of these shows, its pretty dense with info and facts from a number of sources: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rj1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rj1
edwardor 6y ago
There is an amazing podcast series — https://irishhistorypodcast.ie/category/podcast/the-great-famine/ https://irishhistorypodcast.ie/category/podcast/the-great-fa... — about the Great Famine if anyone is interested in learning more.

274 points by conorliv1 6y ago

blendo 6y ago

I have great respect for the Navajo and Hopi people of Arizona and New Mexico.

oh_sigh 6y ago
I have great respect for the Scottish people of Scotland.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  I see what you did there.
- mirimir 6y ago
  My first wife's Scottish ancestors came from Ireland.

inetsee 6y ago

When I see stories like this I wish there was some way on Hacker News that I could spend some of my karma points to give this story more than one up vote.

Talanes 6y ago
As someone who's still internalized pre-voting internet discussions, and just reads things without voting 99% of the time, I saw your comment and upvoted. Some real karma for you :)
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  I run a problem validation forum[1] where I'm experimenting with the karma system; one can donate karma to 'Down Vote' but not for an 'Up Vote'. 'Up Vote' privileges requires minimal karma(2), 'Down Vote' privileges are rather high(20). Karma is visible only to the owner and the moderators. Rationale being, people shouldn't be discouraged to post their problems however small or trivial it may sound and others to share possible ideas to solve that problem or existing solutions without any prejudice. Ofcourse this raises the issue of people not willing to part their karma to maintain forum sanctity, but as of now that's manageable when compared to discouragement from down votes. [1]https://needgap.com https://needgap.com
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > Ofcourse this raises the issue of people not willing to part their karma to maintain forum sanctity, but as of now that's manageable when compared to discouragement from down votes. Not a problem on Stack Overflow. And the website is a neat concept too.
  - pas 6y ago
    Slashdot used probabilistic anonymized meta-moderation. I think that should be used to weigh people's karma. (So someone that is deemed very wise by the meta-moderators should have more "power".) I have no idea of the second order effects of this. Echo chambers are of course possible, just like without this. Maybe adding a third layer would help to reward people who help diversify and rationalize discussions, and so on.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0QH-khhr8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0QH-khhr8

1cvmask 6y ago

Hear is another similar story with a twist from English royalty: https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/generous-turkish-aid-irish-great-hunger https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/generous-turkish-...

frabbit 6y ago
That is particularly galling. It is interesting that the story was challenged in its totality when (ex) president Mary Robinson mentioned it during a visit to Turkey (she incorrectly stated that the heraldic coat of arms of Drogheda town contained a star-and-crescent in gratitude for this act, whereas it was the emblem of an earlier English military governor).

qwerty456127 6y ago

I've already read the story a number of times (incl. here IIRC) during the recent weeks so, despite it's cool, heart-touching and inspiring, it's nothing new. What impressed me this time, however, is the quick read / deep read switch articles on this website have. It's the first time I see such and I bloody freakin wish every website had it!

bcoates 6y ago
Maybe we need a little badge for articles that are inverted-pyramid compliant and you can stop reading whenever you like

ConsiderCrying 6y ago

It's always a bit sad to see people rely on the chance charity of others, even if, in most cases, these others come through. The Navajo people have been let down by the people ruling over their land (no, I don't mean the Navajo leaders.) But the Irish/Choctaw friendship is one of my favorite uplifting stories if only because it's about those who have little giving it away to people in a similar predicament. It's still sad but there's so much kindness in that gesture. I think I remember a similar story where an Indian or Shri Lankan city sent some livestock to a starving European city, but can't find anything at the moment.

MarkMc 6y ago

There is a similar story described by Robert Cialdini in his classic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [1]: "In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have been surprised to learn of a five-thousand-dollar relief donation from Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember my chin hitting my chest, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading insisted that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the Ethiopian Red Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims of that year’s earthquakes in Mexico City...Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was invaded by Italy." [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence

pjc50 6y ago
Extraordinary thing to happen at the time of Band Aid and the big donations from the UK to Ethiopia following the first disturbing pictures of the famine being broadcast on the news. Disturbing pictures on the news are now so routine as to be ignored .. or vanish altogether.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  More likely ignored because there's things that draw more views happening elsewhere. Hong Kong protests took over the news for a while, but then there was the Coronavirus and suddenly the Hong Kong protests seem to no longer be a thing and the people forgotten.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Are the Hong Kong protests still happening? Or did everyone stay at home during the pandemic? It looks like the situation is now "punchup in the legislature, but everyone is wearing facemasks": https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3084822/hong-kong-lawmakers-thrown-out-key-legislative-council https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3084822...

mywacaday 6y ago

In 2015 my local town erected a sculpture to commemorate the event. Maybe that's why the story is fresh in Irish memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_Spirits_(sculpture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_Spirits_(sculpture) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kindred-spirits-sculpture https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kindred-spirits-sculptur...

doinathing 6y ago
Seeing the donations coming in (and making one myself) I was reminded that this sculpture is the reason I know about the event in the first place and, saw the significance of the help, and felt moved to donate. It made me think a lot about how public art and the things we commemorate with public art can have a tangible impact on our actions and our beliefs.

s_dev 6y ago

I read this -- very proud of the efforts of the Irish but proud also that they didn't forget those small acts of kindness. Showing gratitude is important and I think this shows gratitude for the solidarity shown in the past. We're also aware 'Choctaw' and 'Hopi' and 'Navajo' are all different tribes and Native Americans aren't a monolithic group. It's just hard if not nigh on impossible to give back to the exact people that helped us. It's the sentiment that counts in this sense.

hellofunk 6y ago
The hundreds of Native American tribes of centuries past were as different from each other as they were different from European cultures. In fact the many different regions of Europe have always had much more in common with each other than the original tribes of North America had with each other.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Well, perhaps the commonality in this case is that both the Irish and the Native American tribes involved were oppressed by Anglo cultures.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

nailer 6y ago

Having an Irish dad, there's a common sense of solidarity between Irish people and other groups who are often seen as oppressed. My Dad and uncles etc. would identify with the Black Panthers, and the PLO, as and a kid (in Australia) I'd wonder why these groups that were so far away and so different were important, and they'd say something along the lines of "because they're us" - like this is the most obvious thing that anyone should know. There's good and bad here (there's a tendency to see the world as 'oppressor' and 'oppressed'), but it comes from good intentions.

patrickk 6y ago
A similar dynamic is at play with Celtic fans (historically Catholic football club in Glasgow) and support for Palestine. https://medium.com/@JohnWight1/celtic-football-fans-and-why-palestine-matters-997c009d035d https://medium.com/@JohnWight1/celtic-football-fans-and-why-...

aclimatt 6y ago

Since the article only very lightly touches on it and some may be understandably confused about the "solidarity" between the Irish and Native Americans, the "Potato Famine" was only so deadly in Ireland to the Irish due to years of colonial rule -- not because the only food in Ireland were rotten potatoes. Ireland had plenty of food at the time. They even continued to export food to England. It's just that due to systematic oppression, Irish natives couldn't afford anything that weren't (now blighted) potatoes. That's where the parallel comes from with the Native Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

patrickk 6y ago
The Whig party's laissez-faire economic ideology and the belief that Divine providence was punishing the lazy natives[1] were major factors explaining why the famine was so severe compared to previous blights. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml#five http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...
- bcoates 6y ago
  Eeeh, this kind of looks like a British apologetic that ignores the whole "hundreds of years of colonial occupation" thing they were doing at the time. Blaming the whigs for a technical agricultural policy point they were probably right about [1] while waving off the background of extractive colonialism that created the dependency on the potato crop is a little convenient [1] when there's famine due to economic shortfall in a country with an agricultural economy, agriculture policy interventions like food dumping and banning exports can make things worse by collapsing the economy. if you want to help, don't send rules send money
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jajag 6y ago
A more accurate portrayal of the situation is to say that Ireland of the time was a state whose economy depended on the export of premium food products - cattle, dairy & grain - whilst the majority of the population were subsistence tenant farmers who grew that produce in order to pay for their farm tenancies, whilst growing a side crop of potatoes in order to sustain themselves. When the potato blight occurred, they were still expected to pay their farm rents using the produce they produced despite this leaving them without a food crop for their own sustenance. Despite what's believed from the common narrative, most of the landlords, middlemen and exporters facilitating the trade and export of food from Ireland at this time were Irish, and many were Catholics; and they were operating within an economic system were these actions made sense. As they would have seen it, stopping the export of food stuffs would have caused economic collapse. In a modern state with well developed central government, the state would have been able to step in and take appropriate actions. But governments of the 1840s simply didn't have the scope of action available to a modern government, or the necessary vision of their role to accompany that. The result was a tragedy of truly enormous proportions, and which certainly more could have been done to avoid; but to suggest that it was simply due to 'systematic oppression' is to greatly simplify the divisions that existed within Irish society at the time, or the motivations of those involved.

youngNed 6y ago

As is the case in a lot of discussion that touches on Irish History, in this thread there are a lot of really bad takes - for anyone interested in a good, well balanced, summary delivered by experts in under an hour - i really recommend the BBC 'In Our Time' podcast on this subject - as with all of these shows, its pretty dense with info and facts from a number of sources: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rj1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rj1

edwardor 6y ago

There is an amazing podcast series — https://irishhistorypodcast.ie/category/podcast/the-great-famine/ https://irishhistorypodcast.ie/category/podcast/the-great-fa... — about the Great Famine if anyone is interested in learning more.