This will have you Tingling all over
A member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma was on Leeside recently to teach students about the historic link between his people and the people of Ireland.
Hosted at Cork City Library, the special storytelling event brought together Cork’s Maria Gillen and Choctaw Nation storyteller Tim Tingle.
The event was attended by students from Scoil Mhuire who learned of the historic link between the Choctaw Nation and the Irish people, the former having donated a significant amount of their money to famine relief efforts in Ireland shortly after they themselves endured the Trail of Tears, a forced displacement of Native Americans in the 19th century.
The aid package first arrived in Cobh before being sent to Mallow for distribution nationwide. The Kindred Spirits monument in Bailick Park, Midleton, commemorates this act of generosity and solidarity.
Tim Tingle is an Oklahoma Choctaw and an award-winning author and storyteller. In 1993, he retraced the Trail of Tears, which his great-great grandfather took, to Choctaw homelands in Mississippi and began recording stories of tribal elders. His critically acclaimed book ‘How I Became a Ghost’ won the 2014 American Indian Youth Literature Award which led to him being a featured author and speaker at the 2014 National Book Festival in Washington DC. In 2018 he won the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award.
Cork storyteller Maria Gillen, who was the Artistic Director of The Listowel International Storytelling Festival in 2021 and 2022, worked with Yarn Storytelling Festival and Storytellers of Ireland to secure Mr Tingle’s visit and tour of Ireland.
Ms Gillen won the Bealtaine Hero Award in 2020 for co-creating intergenerational resilience stories online during the Pandemic and represented Cork city storytelling in Marrakesh in 2021.
She also founded the Mad For Road Tellers group of travelling tellers that have played live in Listowel and London this year and will be appearing in Antrim in April 2023.
Welcoming the event, Maria said one of the most fulfilling things about storytelling around the world is learning about the similarities and differences in stories across borders and seeing the power stories have to bring people together.
“Listening to, and telling stories builds new connections and revives old ones. I am delighted to bring students from a local school here in Cork together for my session with Tim to learn about an old connection they have with the world. The Library is a perfect venue for this too, where many stories are brought together for everyone to access,” she said.