History is repeating. It’s important to decide what we keep.

Last month, the Navajo Nation, hit hard by COVID-19 and neglected by the US government, set up a GoFundMe to ask for support. To their surprise, a huge number of donations rolled in from Ireland. People left messages like “We will never forget your kindness to us when we had nothing” and “You helped us when no one else did”.

They were referencing a truly humbling act of solidarity: During Ireland’s Great Famine, the Choctaw Nation sent $170 (US$5000 in today’s money) to Ireland’s aid, at a time when they themselves were enduring enormous hardship. This story has always left a deep impression on me.

When I first heard about the Great Famine in primary school, I learned of potato crop failure, poverty, starvation and emigration. I later learned that, as with the pandemic of today, political will could have changed things a great deal. Instead, obsession with laissez-faire economics (the market must be free of government) meant that food grown in Ireland left the country instead of feeding those in need. Moralisation of poverty and deep cultural prejudice for the Irish – who were seen as inferior and lacking self-reliance and work ethic – meant food programs were short lived and public works programs were waged too low to survive on.

This story reminds me that solidarity isn’t about qualifying the other person’s pain or struggle against your own, it’s about standing against oppressive ideologies and their systems wherever they manifest themselves. As people struggle to recover from this pandemic and seek justice through protest, I hope we too can channel the compassion of the Choctaw Nation and continue to choose solidarity, not moralisation.