A Native American community severely impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak has received an outpour of donations from Irish people, who are returning a historic favor from 173 years ago.

In 1847, at a tribal meeting, the Choctaw Nation heard of families struggling to survive Ireland’s infamous Potato Famine. They took up a collection, pooled together $170 and sent it to a group collecting money in New York.

Fast-forward to the worst pandemic in modern times, Coronavirus has struck the Native American reservations, with hundreds of deaths. The Irish are repaying the generosity they received two centuries earlier from Native Americans as thousands of donations are pouring in from Ireland into a GoFundMe online fundraiser.

Money donated by the Irish is part of $5 million that’s been raised to help about 4,300 Hopi and Navajo households operated by Native American volunteers to buy food and supplies for families on the Hopi and Navajo reservations in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

The power of “Pay it forward“.

Source: GoFundMe (please donate here: [https://www.gofundme.com/f/NHFC19Relief](https://www.gofundme.com/f/NHFC19Relief))