This is an appeal for a Choctaw friend, Waylon Gary White Deer, whose home on a tribal reservation suffered major damage during the snow and ice storm which brought chaos to Texas and Oklahoma earlier this year.
We heard mostly about the disaster which affected Texas, but Oklahoma was also declared a disaster zone, with Governor Kevin Stitt requesting, on February 17, federal help from President Biden due to the unexpected winter storm.
In the past year, Waylon has suffered ill health and has been hospitalized twice with bronchial disorders, pneumonia, and has undergone heart surgery.
Waylon's home suffered considerable damage. He informed me that all of the outside water lines and inside drainage pipes had burst with severe internal flooding. His home is very poorly insulated and heated only with small electric space heaters.
The weather bureau in Oklahoma has confirmed that more such super storms will be coming because of climate change. Due to his health issues, Waylon's home was not insured, simply because he was, due to ill-health, unable to work and could not afford insurance.
Waylon is now in his 70s and still dreams of returning to Ireland when the pandemic is over, to meet again his many friends. He has even expressed the wish to be laid to rest in Ireland. Earlier in the year I made an appeal for US$10,000 to help repair his home. This was very generously supported. But when the work to repair the house began, other issues showed up, including the need to repair the roof and now the flooring downstairs, damaged by flooding.
I have raised the appeal to US$17,500 and we are now only US$3,500 short of that target. Friends in Ireland and amongst the Irish Diaspora have been incredibly generous and I’m hoping that this article in the Irish Echo will help us to get across the line.
I am hoping that we can ensure Waylon's home is properly insulated so that in the years remaining, especially during winter, he will be safe and comfortable, as he continues to do what he is best at, creating his extraordinary art.
You can find the GoFundMe appeal at this link: https://gofund.me/ca1d0190
More than anyone, Waylon has worked with diligence and generosity to deepen the friendship between Ireland and the Choctaw Nation and to keep alive the memory of his people's act of humanitarian generosity during Ireland's Great Hunger. A humanitarian act which continues to inspire acts of generosity in our time, such as we saw in 2020 when the Navajo/Hopi people were seeking help with PPE and Covid-19 relief in South Dakota. Thanks, primarily to Waylon, the Choctaw story is fondly and respectfully remembered in Ireland and amongst the Irish Diaspora to this day.
Waylon's love for Ireland was such that he came to live here, primarily in the Donegal Gaeltacht, for eight years. In 2019, just before the Covid pandemic broke upon the world, he returned to Oklahoma to his small two-story house, left to him by his father.
His Famine-related work has spanned 26 years during which he led various commemorative walks, gave lectures and talks, painted a mural in Derry's Creggan Estate, engaged in fundraising for humanitarian and justice causes, and was interviewed on national radio and television.
He even made an appearance on RTE's popular soap "Fair City" when it explored the Choctaw donation to Ireland. Waylon has also met with various government ministers and has been warmly greeted by President Mary Robinson, President Mary McAleese, and our current President, Michael D. Higgins.
He was also welcomed to the Northern Ireland Assembly by the late Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, and was warmly embraced by Derry's two Nobel Laureates, the late John Hume and Seamus Heaney.
In 1989 I travelled as Director of AFrI to Oklahoma to thank the Choctaw Nation for their humanitarian generosity to Ireland during the worst year of Ireland's Great Hunger, 1847.
The Choctaw, on hearing of the plight of the Irish, donated $170 from their meager resources. They were moved, no doubt, by the memory of their own Trail of Tears just 15 years earlier when they were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in Mississippi to Oklahoma, during which they lost thousands of their people from cold and hunger.
During my visit, I invited the Choctaw leadership to lead the annual famine walk from Doolough to Louisburgh, Co. Mayo. Thus began a remarkable connection which included a visit to the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma by President Mary Robinson in 1995, and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in 2018, and reciprocal Choctaw visits to Ireland over the years.
In all of my dealing with the Choctaw the person who impressed me most was the distinguished Choctaw artist, Waylon Gary White Deer. He was always generous with his time and considerable talents. I found him to be a person of integrity. Waylon's knowledge of Choctaw history and culture was compelling. As a Choctaw elder and tradition bearer he commanded respectful silence when he spoke to Irish audiences of his ancestors and drew his listeners into a sacred space.
Waylon has grown to love Ireland, its history, culture and the Irish language. He first came to Ireland as the guest of Concern Worldwide in 1995. That was his first of many visits promoting humanitarian and justice causes on behalf of Concern, AFrI and other organizations. He was asked by the Irish government in 1995 to commemorate through his art the 1847 Choctaw gift for a substantial commission. He donated the entire commission for the humanitarian work of Concern Worldwide to mark the beginning of the 150th anniversary of An Gorta Mor (the Great Hunger).
You can find the GoFundMe appeal at this link: https://gofund.me/ca1d0190. I can be contacted at www.donmullan.org.
