Irish PM has announced a new scholarship programme which will allow Choctaw Native American students to study in Ireland.

The Irish PM made the announcement during his official visit to the Choctaw reservation in Oklahoma today.

He officially thanked the Choctaw Nation, whose ancestors provided relief to Ireland during the Great Famine, saying Irish and Chochtaw people have a “sacred bond” binding us together.

In March 1847, the Choctaw community of Oklahoma collected some $170 – equivalent to several thousands of dollars today – and sent it to famine-ravaged Ireland.

Mr Varadkar, who is the first Taoiseach to visit the Choctaws, thanked the community for the support they provided to the Irish people despite their own horrific hardships.

“Back in the nineteenth century, when the Irish people were oppressed, abused, neglected and degraded by our colonial master, at our lowest, your spirit of generosity was at its highest,” Mr Varadkar said.


“You showed compassion to a starving people, who were dying in their hundreds of thousands, or about to embark on our own ‘Trail of Tears’ across the Atlantic Ocean to seek a new life in Canada or the United States”.

He added: “A few years ago, on a visit to Ireland, a representative of the Choctaw Nation called your support for us ‘a sacred memory’. It is that and more. It is a sacred bond, which has joined our peoples together for all time.” 'United by hope'

Announcing the new scholarship scheme, the Taoiseach said: "Our people also share a commitment to education as the single best means of building a better life for our children.


"So, I am delighted to announce today a new scholarship programme, a partnership between the Government of Ireland and the Choctaw Nation, for Choctaw students to study in Ireland.

"This is an opportunity for us to learn from you and from your culture, and you from ours, in a sharing of knowledge that will enrich both our peoples.”

The first scholarship under the Irish Government’s new programme will commence in 2019.

Mr Varadkar added: "Our ancestors were joined together in a time of tragedy; our descendants will be united by a spirit of hope."
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Members of the Choctaw nation perform a war dance for @campaignforleo #iestaff pic.twitter.com/YCkar7JF9f

— Elaine Loughlin (@Elaine_Loughlin) March 12, 2018

Hundreds of people at Bailick Park in Midleton to attend the dedication of the monument to the Choctaw Nation.

The Irish people and the Native American Choctaw nation are bonded by the difficulties they have endured in their respective cultures and the resilience they have shown to overcome hardships, the Chief of the Choctaw Nation told a gathering in Co Cork yesterday.

Chief Gary Batton told of the similarities between the two people as a special feather sculpture was unveiled in Bailick Park, Midleton, Co Cork. The ‘Kindred Spirits’ sculpture commemorates a donation made by the Choctaw people to Ireland during the great famine.

Chief Gary Batton said he became emotional when he saw the sculpture.

“The people in Ireland know how to get a gathering together. It is hard for me to express what a great honour this is this tribute to our Choctaw ancestors. I can’t tell you the feelings it gives to me to see it in person.

“We know the story of the tragedy of all our people that we endured and over came. But we knew once we heard of the story of hardship of the Irish people we knew it was our time to step up and help out. We have endured — the Choctaw people and the people of Ireland.”


Meanwhile, the Mayor of Co Cork, Cllr Seamus McGrath said the Irish people were very grateful for the “kindness of strangers” during the great famine.

“To think they heard about the hardship that the Irish people were enduring during the great famine and they made whatever effort they could to help out. It is an extraordinary story. It is only right that we in Cork would mark that and that there would be a tribute to that act of generosity.”


Close to 20 representatives from the Choctaw Nation from Oklahoma attended the public ceremony. It included traditional Choctaw and Irish music and dancing, as well as activities around the sculpture and the story.

‘Kindred Spirits’, by Cork based sculptor Alex Pentek, was commissioned in 2013 by the former Midleton Town Council to commemorate the time in 1847, when the kind people of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma heard of the suffering of the starving Irish. They responded, with greatness of spirit and generosity, by contributing a sum of $170 dollars (about $4,400 today), to send food aid to Ireland. This show of solidarity came despite the great hardships being faced by the Choctaw people themselves who were also living in conditions of starvation and poverty, and who had just a few years previous endured the Trail of Tears.


The sculpture comprising of nine, majestic 20 foot eagle feathers reaching towards the sky in the East Cork town, arranged in a circular shape, represents a bowl filled with food, presented to those suffering hunger, metaphorically speaking.

This is not the first time the Choctaw Nation has been honoured in Ireland. In 1990, Choctaw leaders travelled to Mayo to take part in a re-enactment of an 1848 protest. The gesture was returned in 1992, when Irish leaders took part in a trek. Former President Mary Robinson also has been named an honorary Choctaw chief.
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A sculpture of nine eagle feathers commemorates the time in 1847, during the Great Hunger, when the Native American Choctaw People donated a substantial amount of money to the Irish famine relief.

In 2015, a statue was commissioned to be built in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland, to honor the kindness of the Choctaws. But the story begins in 1831, when the Choctaw people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in Mississippi.

A few years later, Choctaws learned of people starving in Ireland. Only sixteen years had passed since the Choctaws had faced hunger and death on the first Trail of Tears and a great empathy was felt when they heard such a similar tale coming from across the ocean. Individual Choctaws collected and donated $170 in 1847 to assist the Irish people.

Jump ahead a century and a half. It took a year for artist Alex Pentek to create Kindred Spirits. With its nine eagle feathers reaching 20 feet into the air, the statue represents “this great moment of compassion, strength, and unity,” said Pentek.

The official unveiling is expected to take place later this spring. For the month of March we would like to share with you a story from a Choctaw Nation employee. Shannon Compton recently visited Midleton, County Cork, Ireland, and expressed her thoughts and feelings when she saw the statue.

This is not the first time that the Choctaw nation has been honored in Ireland. In 1990, Choctaw leaders traveled to County Mayo to take part in a reenactment of the desperate walk undertaken by locals to their landlord in 1848. The gesture was returned in 1992, when Irish commemoration leaders took part in a 500 mile trek from Oklahoma to Mississippi. Former Irish President Mary Robinson has also been named an honorary Choctaw chief.


A plaque acknowledging the contribution of the Choctaw people to the one million Irish people starving during Black ‘47 , the worst year of the famine, is mounted in Dublin’s Mansion House and reads, "Their humanity calls us to remember the millions of human beings throughout our world today who die of hunger and hunger-related illness in a world of plenty."

Wolves were once an integral part of the Irish countryside and culture. The last wild wolf in Ireland is said to have been killed in 1786, three hundred years after they were believed to have been wiped out in England and a century after their disappearance in Scotland.

Wolves feature prominently in Irish Mythology. Airitech was a mysterious creature whose three daughters were werewolf like creatures, eventually killed by Cas Corach.The Irish word for wolf is Mac Tire meaning literally the Son of the Country(side) and association with human transformation linger, and whilst some consider this is imported there are many references in Irish mythology to lycanthropes and changing to other animal forms.

The Morrígan was said to take on the form of a red-furred wolf, particularly in her battle with the hero Cú Chulainn. Mac Cecht killed a wolf feeding on a still living woman on a battlefield.Cormac mac Airt was said to have been raised by wolves, and that he could understand their speech. Four wolves would accompany him in his rebellion against Lugaid mac Con, and would later be accompanied by them until the end of his life.

One tale describes how in 1182, a priest travelling from Ulster into Meath encountered a talking wolf, which revealed itself to be a man of Ossory, whose ancestors had been cursed to turn into wolves every seven years and return to their human form after another seven years had passed. The wolf explained that his wife, who was also under the curse, was dying, and he pleaded with the priest to give her the viaticum. The priest complied, and was later put on the right road to Meath by the grateful wolf.


The earliest radiocarbon date for Irish wolf remains come from excavated cave sites in Castlepook Cave, north of Doneraile, County Cork, and dates back to 34,000 BC. Wolf bones discovered in a number of other cave sites, particularly in the counties of Cork, Waterford and Clare indicate the presence of wolves throughout the Midlandian ice age which probably reached its peak between 20,000 BC and 18,000 BC.


By about 14,000 BC Ireland became separated from Great Britain, which, itself, still formed part of mainland Europe, to become an island. Wolves were one of just a few species of land animal in Ireland that survived through the Nahanagan Stadial, a cold period that occurred between 10,800 BC and 9500 BC.

Wolves were a major part of Ireland’s postglacial fauna, as evidenced by their prominence in ancient Irish myths and legends, in a number of place names (both Irish and English), in archaeological sites, along with a considerable number of historical references. The ringforts, a common feature of the Irish landscape, were built partly as a defence against wolves and to protect livestock, over the period 1000 BC to AD 1000.

In 1571, as a result of its comprehensive destruction by "James Mac Maurice ... (and) ... the warlike troops of the Clann-Sweeny and Clann-Sheehy", Kilmallock "became the receptacle and abode of wolves" In 1573, the aftermath of the battle of Bel-an-Chip was described - "Noisy were the ravens and carrion-crows, and other ravenous birds of the air, and the wolves of the forest, over the bodies of the nobles slain in the battle on that day." In 1581 William Odhar O Carroll was put "unsparingly to the sword, and detested (the thought of) shewing him quarter or mercy. They slew him, and left his body under the talons of ravens and the claws of wolves." In the aftermath of the Desmond rebellion, the body of a Dr. Saunders was found in Desmond in early 1583 who perished miserably, having fallen a victim to famine and the effects of exposure to the weather, and whose body was discovered partially devoured by wolves. In the aftermath of the wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Francisco de Cuellar turned to check upon a companion only to find him dead. There he lay on the ground with more than six hundred other dead bodies which the sea cast up, and the crows and wolves devoured them, without there being any one to bury them.

The port books of Bristol record between a yearly average of between 100 and 300 wolfskins exported from Ireland throughout the 1500s and a total of 961 skins in a single year.

Pilib Ó Súilleabháin Béirre (c.1590-1660), writing of Ireland and particularly Munster after the end of the Nine Years' War, described the aftermath: THUS the war was finished. Ireland was almost entirely laid waste and destroyed, and terrible want and famine oppressed all, so that many were forced to eat dogs and whelps: many not having even these, died. And not only men but even beasts were hungry. The wolves, coming out of the woods and mountains, attacked and tore to pieces, men weak from want. The dogs rooted from the graves rotten carcases partly decomposed. And so there was nought but abundance of misery ...

Throughout most of the first half of the 17th century, Ireland had a substantial wolf population of not less than 400 and maybe as high as 1000 wolves at any one time. One of the nicknames used for Ireland at this time was “wolf-land”.

Extermination

The first instance of legislation against Irish wolves dates back to 1584 when John Perrot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered Robert Legge to come up with a scheme to encourage the destruction of problem wolves. Further records of legislation occur in 1610 and 1611. In 1614, an Englishman named Henric Tuttesham was offered £3 for every wolf he killed. The wolf population at the time was high enough for Tuttesham to be authorised to keep four men and 24 hounds in every county for seven years, a total of 128 men and 768 hounds.

Although the Irish had long hunted wolves, it is evident from documentary data that they did not see the same need to exterminate them as the English did. Even though wolves were perceived as threats, they were nonetheless seen as natural parts of the Irish landscapes. The bulk of anti-wolf legislation occurred during the decade following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. A number of writers from this time period suggest that as a result of ongoing military campaigns in Ireland, particularly the Cromwellian wars 1641-1652 and the devastation of much of the country, wolf numbers were on the increase.

The level of rewards and bounties established by Oliver Cromwell's regime attracted a few professional wolf hunters to Ireland, mostly from England. Politically, the prospect of numbers of armed Irish roaming around the country hunting wolves was not acceptable, given the ongoing conflict between the Irish and the new English settlers, so it was seen as much safer for the English authorities to encourage men from their own country to deal with the wolf problem. The problems caused by wolves were considered serious enough by Cromwell’s government to impose a ban on the exportation of Irish Wolfhounds.

In 1652 the Commissioners of the Revenue of Cromwell’s Irish Government set substantial bounties on wolves, £6 for a female, £5 for a male, £2 for a subadult and 10 shillings for a cub. In the same year, measures were taken for the destruction of wolves in the Barony of Castleknock, county Dublin. A grand total of £243 5s 4d was paid for wolf kills in Galway, Mayo, Sligo and part of Leitrim formerly within the precinct of Galway in 1655 or 1665, depending on the author.

Between the period July 1649 and November 1656 the total amount of bounty paid out for wolf kills in Ireland as a whole was £3,847 5s. Galway, Mayo, Sligo and part of Leitrim had proportionately more wolves than the rest of the country, given that large tracts of this area were relatively untouched by humans. A Captain Edward Piers was leased land over a five-year period in Dunboyne, county Meath on the condition that he kill fourteen wolves and 60 foxes. In the 1690s Rory Carragh was hired to kill the last two wolves in one part of Ulster and was equipped with a boy and two wolf dogs. The last reliable observation of a wolf in Ireland comes from County Carlow when a wolf was hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster for killing sheep in 1786.

Huge Sculpture Commemorating Choctaw Kindness Takes Shape in Ireland

Plans are underway to erect a sculpture that memorializes the aid that the Choctaw people sent to Ireland during the Great Irish Famine.

In 1847, the Choctaws pulled together copy70 to send to the starving Irish populace, a sum that is reckoned to be worth more than $5,000 today. The gift established a bond between the Choctaws and the Irish that is still recognized today. In 1992, a delegation from Ireland trekked a 500-mile path from Broken Bow, Oklahoma, to Nanih Waiya, Mississippi, following the route (in reverse) so many Choctaws had taken on the Trail of Tears in 1831. In 1995, Irish President Mary Robinson visited the Choctaw Nation, where she was made an honorary chief.


Now, a sculptor is creating a memorial near the southern Irish city of Cork to pay tribute to the suffering of the Irish and the kindness of the Choctaw.

Alex Pentek expects his "Kindred Spirits," an arrangement of nine massive stainless-steel feathers, to be completed a few months from now. It is to be installed in Bailic Park, in Midleton, County Cork.


Pentek explains on his website that the work is "an empty bowl symbolic of the Great Irish Famine formed from the seemingly fragile and rounded shaped eagle feathers used in Choctaw ceremonial dress."


According to Irish Central, the sculpture costs some copy00,000, and invitations have been extended to the leadership of the Choctaw Nation. Below are some images and a video courtesy Alex Pentek:
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Ireland is called the Puppy Farm of Europe, but lawmakers hope that infamous reputation has come to an end as new legislation restricts commercial puppy mills throughout the country.

On New Year’s Day the Irish government got serious about protecting dogs with two new laws. They implemented the Dogs Breeding Establishments Act and the Welfare of Greyhounds Act.

The Dogs Breeding Establishments Act controls dog breeders and forces them to provide humane care under strict standards and regulations. Some of the regulations include: keeping dogs in clean housing that is not overcrowded, providing bedding, fresh food and water and exercising the dogs.

The law calls for local veterinarians to inspect all of the kennels and gives them the authority to shut down a facility where dogs are not being properly cared for. Vets will also monitor that females have only one litter of puppies in a year.

All puppies must be micro-chipped so they can be traced back to a specific breeder in case of a problem and all breeders must be registered.

Harsh penalties will be imposed for anyone who doesn’t comply with the new laws. Animal activists are pleased with the regulations and think it will stop unethical breeders in the country.

The Welfare of Greyhounds Act mandates higher welfare standards for the humane treatment of working greyhounds, breeding greyhounds and their offspring.

Both of these laws should make a happy difference in the lives of thousands of Ireland’s dogs.

Below is a non-graphic video filmed by Ban the Puppy Mills about the sad life on some puppy farms in Ireland, Wales and England.