A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues

Epilogue

IN MARCH 2020, Ethel Branch, the former attorney general of the Navajo Nation, did something wonderful. She began raising a $5,000 fund that would be used to buy food and water for elderly members of the Hopi and Navajo Native American communities. To her amazement, the fundraising was enormously successful. The Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund received donations of almost $18 million. One of the major donors, contributing $10 million, was MacKenzie Scott, the great philanthropist mentioned in Chapter 3. However, the most unlooked for and surprising donations came from citizens of Ireland. Yes, that island in northern Europe.

The catalyst for this response from the Irish, including $100,000 from Larry Mullen Jr., the drummer from the band U2, was a tweet about the fund from a reporter. The donations began to flow in immediately. More intriguingly, it was the accompanying remarks such as “we remember” and “for kindness shown to Ireland” that explained the reason behind the powerful response of the Irish. Many of the comments referred to the help provided to the Irish during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852. Remarkably, in 1847, the Native American Choctaw people donated $170 to Ireland. So now, almost 175 years later, the Irish were displaying their gratitude. The most poignant statement that accompanied a donation was “we remember what your people did for us.”¹

It is this spirit of “paying it forward” that I am hopeful will be the result of this book. I ...