Toronto researchers help uncover Ontario First Nations' donations to Irish Famine relief fund

Researchers say newly discovered archival records reveal an important connection between Ontario First Nations and Irish famine victims.

The Irish Potato Famine was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland, and one of the most traumatic events in modern Irish history. Year after year, the country's potato crop failed. By the time the worst was over, one million people had died of disease and starvation. Survivors were forced to emigrate. In the summer of 1847, Toronto gave refuge to 38,000 Irish famine victims — at a time when Toronto's population was only 20,000.

The part of this history that is virtually unknown is the contribution to the relief fund from Indigenous communities in Canada.

"At least 15 bands answered the call and requested that donations be deducted from their government annuities, added to the fund, and then sent to 'our suffering fellow subjects and Christian brethren in Ireland and Scotland,'' according to Mark McGowan's research. McGowan is a professor of history at the University of Toronto and has spent time going through the archival documents.

"We really don't know how this story was lost," he said.

McGowan says the documents show Mohawks, Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations, Chippewa, Delaware, Wyandotte, and Mississauga peoples had donated £115, an amount equivalent to $12,426 today.

With further donations from the Saugeen, Ojibwa of Lake Huron, and Moravian Ojibwa, the total Indigenous gift to the relief fund was £165, or $17,978 in today's Canadian currency. Some of these contributions came from Indigenous communities in Quebec.

"We hadn't known all that much until a colleague and I stumbled upon an actual letter that petitioned these Indigenous peoples in the province of Ontario to help support their 'white brethren' who are starving and dying in Ireland and Scotland," said McGowan, adding that the task of going through these letters fell to him.

McGowan says some of the letters even state how distressing it was for these Indigenous communities to see the Irish famine victims suffering.

Duke Redbird, an elder from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation says his own community donated to the fund.

"They were as generous as they could be even though our people were in a pretty desperate situation themselves," he said.

"But it was an act of kindness, and it was an act of honouring the treaties with our white brethren who were suffering in Ireland at the time."

Redbird says while there may not be documentation of this, there have been oral stories shared of Indigenous communities adopting Irish children who lost their parents during the famine.

"I think this is all evidence of reconciliation," he said. "All of our relations are human, wherever we happen to be from."