Samhain Harvest and ‘Growing Within’ Event scheduled for Falcarragh

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Choctaw heirloom squash grown at Glenveagh National Park this summer to be shared at the Samhain Harvest: Food, Famine and Growing Within Seminar in Falcarragh, Co. Donegal.
Choctaw heirloom squash grown at Glenveagh National Park this summer to be shared at the Samhain Harvest: Food, Famine and Growing Within Seminar in Falcarragh, Co. Donegal.

There is an emotional condition that most of Ireland doesn’t know it’s being affected by, experts are saying. Malignant shame, or post colonial stress disorder is ever present in Irish society today. “It’s important to keep in mind that we are only beginning to understand inter-generational trauma. This type of trauma is often unknown or unrecognised by those who endure it” says Maeve Peoples, a Dublin psychotherapist. Increasing evidence is showing that the untreated effects of holocaust are passed on to future generations.

“By looking at inter-generational trauma in societies as diverse as third generation Jewish holocaust survivors and aboriginal tribes people in Australia, we now know that recovery is possible. From these studies we learn to find the source of issues as diverse as food addiction, eating disorders, increased levels of suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction to name but a few. Identifying the source of the problem allows us to begin to address it” Peoples added.

“I first became familiar with the idea of inter-generational trauma when I was living in America” says Waylon White Deer, a seminar organiser. “There are many similarities between First Nations peoples in America and Irish society as a result of historic emotional damage. This Saturday, we will explore some of these issues”

Maeve Peoples will be leading a discussion about Famine trauma at “Samhain Harvest: Food, Famine and Growing Within” organised by the Afri Choctaw-Irish Famine Landscape Project. The seminar is sponsored by Action from Ireland (Afri) and Concern Worldwide and begins Saturday at 11:00 AM in The Yard, Falcarragh. The afternoon session will highlight food sovereignty, security and solidarity. Admission is free and the seminar will end with a Samhain celebration.

Walking With Spirit

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Famine walk leader, Linda Ervine, right, holding the Afri banner crossing over the Peace Bridge in Derry with the Guildhall in the background. Nuala Crilly of St Columb's Park House is holding the banner on the left. Photo: Rob Fairmichael
Famine walk leader, Linda Ervine, right, holding the Afri banner crossing over the Peace Bridge in Derry with the Guildhall in the background. Nuala Crilly of St Columb’s Park House is holding the banner on the left. Photo: Rob Fairmichael

A small but enthusiastic crowd gathered on the Guildhall steps in Derry on a wet weekday afternoon, 21st September 2016 (International Day of Peace), for a famine walk. They were welcomed by Mayor Hilary McClintock.  From the Guildhall the walk went to the former Poor House at Glendermott Road and then on to St Columb’s Park House for refreshments and chat. As a regional and transport hub, Derry would have received many starving incomers during the Great Famine, presenting themselves at the Poor House door where the famine walk stopped and remembered those who suffered and died.

Organised by Waylon Gary White Deer for Afri, with Concern backing, the walk leader was Linda Ervine of the Turas Irish language project at East Belfast Mission, some of whose members came on the walk. Linda Ervine drew attention to the fact that the Protestant community, and she is from a Presbyterian background, also suffered in An Gorta Mór, but that history had been hidden. Other speakers included Waylon Gary White Deer, Rob Fairmichael for Afri, and Helen Henderson of St Columb’s Park House, and sean nós singer Noeleen Ní Cholla performed a couple of songs including Éirigh suas a stóirín.

This Walk was part of Afri’s Famine Landscape Project and was organised in partnership with St. Columb’s Park House.

Damien Dempsey to lead Dublin Famine Walk

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Choctaw Gary White Deer in Glasnevin Cemetery
Choctaw Gary White Deer in Glasnevin Cemetery

A Great Hunger commemoration walk led by Damien Dempsey will proceed from the Garden of Remembrance to Glasnevin Cemetery on Saturday, 27 August, at 2:00 PM. The theme of the walk is “Gan Bia, Gan Beal, Gan Ainm” (Without Food, Without Voice, Without Name) and is being sponsored by Afri.

Glasnevin Cemetery has the largest mass grave in Ireland, with tens of thousands of victims of Ireland’s Great Hunger interred. Names of all Famine victims have been kept in the Glasnevin registry, highly unusual for Famine mass burials. “Through remembering, healing happens” said walk organiser Choctaw Gary White Deer. In 1847, the Choctaw donated monies for Irish Famine relief.

“It’s our duty to pass on the true history, brutal and beautiful, to the children, and they might see they have more in common than they thought with less fortunate people around the world now” Damien Dempsey said. “Everyone is very welcome to come along” he added.

Other walk leaders include: Choctaw Gary White Deer, musician RoJ, and Justine Nantale (Uganda).

Spirit Felt During Famine Walk

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Nóilín Ní Cholla sings sean nós song An Mhaighdean Mhara to walkers at Famine Graveyard in Dunfanaghy
Nóilín Ní Cholla sings sean nós song An Mhaighdean Mhara to walkers at Famine Graveyard in Dunfanaghy

“We were very pleased with this year’s Afri Famine Walk in Northwest Donegal” said Máire Nic Fhearraigh, a walk organiser. “Participants came from as far away as Dublin.”

Called “Seeds of Hope and Remembrance”, the nine-mile journey originated on Saturday 4th June in Dunfanaghy and ended in Falcarragh. Walkers stopped along the way to lay flowers at a Famine mass grave. “When Noleen Ní Cholla sang a beautiful sean nós song at graveside, it stirred something there. Everyone felt the spirit of what we were doing. We carried that spirit with us on our walk” Nic Fhearraigh added. Continue reading “Spirit Felt During Famine Walk” →

Seeds of Hope and Remembrance – Donegal Famine Commemoration Walk

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Tony Dalton Falcarragh community gardener receives Choctaw heirloom squash seeds from AFRI organiser Waylon White Deer
Tony Dalton, Falcarragh community gardener, receives Choctaw heirloom squash seeds from Afri organiser, Waylon White Deer

For hundreds of years, Choctaw Indians  raised corn, beans and squash in vast and fertile flood plains,  until the American army evicted them from their ancient homelands on deadly 500-mile forced marches. Not long after, the Choctaw were asked to donate monies to help feed the victims of Ireland’s Great Hunger. They gave what little they had. Continue reading “Seeds of Hope and Remembrance – Donegal Famine Commemoration Walk” →

Just A Second in Moville

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Graphic Harvest produced as part of the Just A Second Schools project in 2015. Drawing by Eimear McNally
Graphic Harvest produced as part of the Just A Second Schools project in 2015. Drawing by Eimear McNally

At the end of April,  Afri’s Co-ordinator Joe Murray and Choctaw Gary White Deer travelled to Moville for a ‘Just a Second’ event, as part of our WorldWise Global Schools Project.  The ‘Just a Second’ educational programme focuses on the absurdity of  in excess of €40,000 being spent every second on war and weapons while a billion people suffer from hunger, lack of clean water and adequate housing.  We began by walking from Moville Community College to the Quays. This was the departure point for many people from Donegal and surrounding areas who  emigrated down through the years, often because of poverty or famine.  We were joined there by Rose Kelly and students from Scoil Eoghain. We had music, poetry and readings focussed on those who are being forced from their their homelands today as a result of poverty, war and climate change. Following this moving event, participants walked back to Moville Community College where we planted a mountain ash together with students and teachers and then had a short seminar touching on issues to do with climate change, militarisation, famine and forced migration. Continue reading “Just A Second in Moville” →

West Sligo Famine Walk

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Gary White Deer at the Dromore West Workhouse in Sligo
Gary White Deer at the Dromore West Workhouse in Sligo

The first Dromore West area Famine walk took place on Sunday, October 18th  at the Dromore West workhouse in West Sligo.   The Walk began at St Farnans Shrine, Doonaltonin and after an initial welcome at the Holy Well, walkers made the journey of four miles along country roads back to Dromore West workhouse. Organised by the Afri Choctaw Famine Landscape Project and LEAP Community Project in Easkey, the purpose of the walk is to “commemorate, heal through remembering and stand in solidarity with those who still suffer in a world of plenty” said Máire Nic Fhearraigh, a walk organiser.

The Afri Famine Landscape project has held Famine walks in Derry, Falcarragh, and Ballyshannon. Gary White Deer, a Choctaw, was the walk leader for the West Sligo commemoration. In 1847, the Choctaw donated monies to help feed Irish Famine victims after undergoing similar suffering. “Let’s honour Ireland’s forgotten” said White Deer, referring to the unmarked Famine grave at the Dromore West workhouse. “And then together we can walk into the future remembering others.”

Afri gratefully acknowledges the support of Concern Worldwide

Derry’s First Famine Walk

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Crossing Derry's Peace Bridge during the Famine Walk on the 31st July 2015
Crossing Derry’s Peace Bridge during the Famine Walk on the 31st July 2015

Around thirty people gathered at the Guild Hall on Friday, July 31st 2015 to take part in Derry’s first Famine walk.

Deputy Mayor of Derry city and Strabane District council, Thomas Kerrigan of the DUP officially launched the walk which was also addressed by Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.  Helen Henderson, director of St. Columb’s Park House, spoke about the importance of the walk and the danger of history repeating itself.  She warned especially about the dangers of  TTIP  – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret between the EU and US.  TTIP is about reducing the regulatory barriers to trade for big business, regarding things like food safety law, environmental legislation, banking regulations and the sovereign powers of individual nations and has been described as “an assault on European and US societies by transnational corporations.”

Following the opening speeches, walkers proceeded from Guildhall Square across the Peace Bridge to the Londonderry Poor Law Union Workhouse, located on Glendermott Road, the Waterside. First opened in 1840, Derry’s workhouse didn’t close its doors until 1948. The Walk had been called “The Longest Walk”, referring to the 13 steps to the workhouse master’s quarters that starving families once had to climb to ask for admittance. Continue reading “Derry’s First Famine Walk” →

‘In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors’

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Walkers at the Falcarragh to Dunfanaghy Famine Walk. Photo: Máire Nic Fhearraigh and Moses Alcorn

 

“They walked to carry the message of food sovereignty, a warning to not ever depend on a single crop, nor a crop seed that carries calculated impotency.”

 

Report by Gary White Deer

They began in late May of this year on a Saturday afternoon, 85 walkers starting from the old Famine storehouse in Falcarragh, the Afri banner carried by a South African and Ghanian living in Donegal, people all flowing together through the town and then surging on past the edge of things, out by Saint Finian’s. Minutes before, a flower basket had been lowered from the same storehouse window that grain had once been sold from during Famine times, grain sold to waiting families who were starving.

The flowers were meant for the mass Famine grave at Dunfanaghy, a small yellow bouquet passed from hand to hand. The air was cool and thick and the clouds brimmed with the smell of rain. The walkers proceeded in a long and winding line as they came onto the back roads and laneways, curving and twisting before Muckish Mountain, moving slowly out of the Gaeltacht toward a distant Famine workhouse.  They were from all over Ireland, but many were from Northwest Donegal and so Ulster Gaelic was spoken up and down the winding line. Continue reading “‘In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors’” →

Donegal Famine Walk: A Portal of Hope

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Rosemary Grain
Rosemary Grain

Whenever Rosemary Grain looks out her office window, she steps through a time portal. Below her third storey office, hungry families once gathered holding half a crown. A bag was lowered from the window, and the coin was placed inside. Then food was lowered back down through the same window. Why the bag? So workers wouldn’t catch Famine fever.

Now called The Yard, previously Mc Carthy’s store, the building in Falcarragh where Rosemary works was once a Famine storehouse. “The starving waited anxiously at a spot near the front door for the food to be lowered in a bag from where my office is on the top floor. Those distributing the food were terrified of catching any diseases from the poor famine victims of the parish. I often look out the window and think of the desperation our ancestors must have gone through.and how fortunate we are to live here now,”  says Rosemary, administrator and Information worker at The Yard, which houses Pobail le Cheile Community Development (LCDP).

At the end of this month, the old Famine storehouse will host “In the Footsteps of our Ancestors” a Famine commemoration walk, which will leave from The Yard and head to the Workhouse Museum in Dunfanaghy. “It’s a great way to commemorate the famine. The involvement of Waylon Gary White Deer is very symbolic because Choctaw Indians, sent money to the Irish during the famine.  The Choctaws themselves had suffered great tragedy, having been displaced from their homelands and forced to move to Oklahoma in the 1830s – the infamous Trail of Tears. They sent $174 to Ireland.” Rosemary adds.  Continue reading “Donegal Famine Walk: A Portal of Hope” →