Third Annual Choctaw Irish Friendship Festival Honors Bond Between Nations
(CHOCTAW RESERVATION) March has been celebrated nationally as Irish American Heritage Month since 1991. For the Choctaw Nation, the month also marks a time to honor its enduring friendship with Ireland, a bond that began in 1847 during the Great Famine, when the Choctaw people sent $170 (worth about $5,000 today) to help the Irish.
For the third year in a row, the Choctaw Cultural Center will host the Choctaw Irish Friendship Festival on March 13–14 to commemorate that historic act of generosity and the relationship that grew from it.
“We hear from people all over the country, Choctaw people, Irish people who have heard, just heard the story and were moved by it,” said Cheyhoma Dugger, the Director of Membership and Development at the Choctaw Cultural Center.
Choctaw Nation Chief Gary Batton will deliver opening remarks at this year’s festival. There will be dancing, traditional games, crafts, and the band River Driver will take the stage for a live performance.
“It's a great opportunity to learn about both cultures, for Choctaw people, for Irish people, and that is really meaningful, just learning more about each of those respective cultures,” said Dugger. “But ultimately being moved to do more and help other people in the same way that our ancestors did.”
The event will also include blacksmith demonstrations, a children’s clay coin stamp activity and a language opportunity.
“We also have an Irish language professor,” said Dugger. “He's going to be there, teaching in the Irish language and we'll have some Choctaw language taught too, which is really special.”
Claire Green Young, the Public Arts Manager for the Choctaw Nation, will also be in attendance at the event. She says the Choctaw-Irish Friendship Festival has a special meaning for her.
Green Young is a past recipient of the scholarship program between the Choctaw Nation and Ireland. She studied at University College Cork in County Cork, Ireland, from 2021-2022, earning a masters degree in museum studies.
“It was a really unique and special opportunity that I felt called to be a part of as someone with mixed settler and Choctaw ancestry,” said Green Young.
“It was extremely rewarding and the best kind of a challenge. Super lucky to have made friends that are now family and just to continue that connection and that part of my own background.”
The scholarship program and cultural monuments are what Green Young says are proof of the strong bond in addition to events like the Friendship Festival.
“That history is so impactful to this day,” said Green Young. “That's the reason why the scholarship started. That's the reason why we have these beautiful works of public art, Kindred Spirits in Cork, Ireland by Alex Pentech and the Eternal Heart in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma by Choctaw artist Sam Stitt. It all wraps back around to that place of kinship that we found in 1847.”
The festival will include a vendor market and artists which Green Young said she is looking forward to.
“I'm very excited about the art market that'll be featured and all the vendors who will be there representing both their Choctaw heritage, but then other vendors who are representing Irish heritage,” said Green Young.
A silent auction for the event begins Tuesday, March 10.
Tickets to the festival can be purchased inside the Choctaw Cultural Center. A full agenda can be viewed here.
