Famine Walk 2009 Power Concedes Nothing without Demand Walk Leaders Willie Corduff & Mary Corduff (Erris) Philip Ikurisi (Niger Delta) Gary Whitedeer (Choctaw) with Donal O Kelly and Sorcha Fox, performing a short extract from the writings of Frederick Douglass. debt and by the ruthlessness of corpo- rate greed. Power concedes Nothing Without This famine walk is a walk of remem- Demand brance and resistance. It remembers Frederick Douglass’ statement ‘power those who died as a result of famine in concedes nothing without demand’ is a Ireland in the 1840s and those who are perennial truth. Douglass discovered this condemned to lives of indebtedness and as a slave in the southern United States. poverty in today’s world. It remembers The Choctaw discovered it as they Frederick Douglass and the countless endured the ‘trail of tears,’ having been numbers of his brothers and sisters who forcibly removed from their ancestral suffered the obscenity and inhumanity of lands in Oklahoma in 1831. The commu- slavery. It remembers the Choctaw, their nities in Erris, County Mayo, and the trail of tears and the genocide of indige- Niger Delta discover it daily in their battle nous peoples who have been decimated with corporate giant Shell and its in the name of ‘progress.’ It remembers acolytes. those who are killed or injured in resource conflicts, from Ken-Saro Wiwa Douglass’ connection with the Great executed by the state with Shell collusion Famine arises from his visit to Ireland in in Nigeria in 1995, to Willie Corduff, beat- 1845, when reports of the famine were en by Shell security with state collusion first beginning to appear. Despite spend- in Ireland in 2009. In the spirit of ing what he described as ‘some of the Frederick Douglass, the Famine Walk happiest moments of his life’ in Ireland, will again issue its compelling and just where he was “regarded and treated at demands of the forces of power – locally every turn with the same kindness and and globally deference paid to white people”, he was ‘Power concedes nothing without obviously affected by the Famine. Moved demand – it never did and it never will’. by the starvation which he witnessed, he wrote: ‘I cannot allow myself to be insen- Joe Murray Andy Storey sible to the wrongs and sufferings of any part of the great family of man’. The fact that political change is possible is demonstrated by the abolition of slav- ery, achieved with great hardship and at great cost. The greatest scorn was heaped on abolitionists at the time, and slaves who attempted escape or resist- ance were regarded in the mainstream press as morally depraved, and their bru- tal punishment seen as justified. The need for continuing the struggle for Willie Corduff, in hospital, Ken Saro Wiwa executed by change is clear from the many other after his encounter the Nigerian State, with forms of slavery that persist today: with Shell 'security' Shell collusion enslavement by famine, by poverty, by Donal O’Kelly is a writer and actor. His play The Cambria, about Frederick Willie Corduff was jailed for three months Douglass’ voyage to Ireland in 1845, has in 2005 for his opposition to Shell’s inland toured Ireland, as well as playing in the UK gas refinery at Bellanaboy and high-pres- and the US. sure pipeline through his farm. He was Sorcha Fox is from Ballinteer in Dublin. awarded the Goldman Environmental She trained in the Samuel Beckett Centre Award in 2006, which is often referred to as in Trinity. She plays the part of Vanessa the Nobel Prize for the Environment. He Barrett in TG4’s Ros na Rún and works as has endured imprisonment, beatings and chief storyliner for the series. She co-stars insults because of his opposition to Shell’s with Donal O’ Kelly in The Cambria. project in Corrib. Mary Corduff was born in Knocknalower in the parish of Kilcommon in Erris, County Hunger and the Millennium Mayo. She married Willie in 1980 and Development Goals moved across the bay to Rossport. They According to the Food and Agriculture have six children and four grandchildren. Organization and the World Food Her main ambition for her children was to Programme there are more than 850 be well behaved and to have respect for million people suffering from hunger in other people. She and her family lived a the world today, while at the same peaceful life until the arrival of Shell. Their time there is enough food to feed 12 opposition to the project going ahead in its present form has ‘taken over their lives’. billion people. This means enough food to feed double the world’s current Philip Ikurisi is from Basyelsa State in population!! In September 2000, in Nigeria, one of the major oil-producing light of such official reports, world states of the Niger Delta Area. He has leaders agreed a set of goals for the established and worked with different international community, to bring organisations in the Niger Delta seeking about a world in which sustaining justice, environmental regeneration and development and eliminating poverty greater control of natural resources. He would have the highest priority. These has also helped establish Niger Delta Awareness in Ireland. are known as the ‘Millennium Development Goals’. The first of these Gary Whitedeer, Choctaw, is an interna- eight goals is to ‘Eradicate extreme tionally known painter, tribal chanter and hunger and poverty’. 191 UN mem- dance leader who has represented the bers have pledged to reduce by half Irish-Choctaw Famine link on many occa- the number of people suffering hunger sions. The link originated when the by 2015. Despite these pledges, since Choctaw, despite their meagre resources, 2000 the number of hungry people in sent $170 to Ireland for Famine Relief in the world has not stopped growing. 1847. The second Choctaw donation to Ireland was presented by Gary Whitedeer to the community resisting Shell’s activities in Erris, Co Mayo in 2008. Gary has made documentary film appearances on RTE, BBC and National Geographic Explorer. ed in hundreds. So there is quite a diver- gence of opinion. In favour of the small- er numbers it can be said that contem- Anyone who goes on the Famine Walk porary newspaper accounts establish along Doolough Lake from Louisburgh only these. Further, in her major work, to Delphi Lodge is retracing a journey of ‘The Great Hunger’, Mrs Cecil horror which the local people made on Woodham-Smyth (1961) has no account the night and morning of 30-31 March of hundreds of lives being lost in such a 1849. Although that ‘death march’ has march. The folk tradition can hardly, been given little publicity until recent however, be discarded out of hand. In times, it has remained fresh in the mind view of the remoteness of the area and of the people of the area. The place has the lack of communications at the time, it been well named ‘A Road to is possible that the full extent of the Remember’. tragedy was not reported. An editorial comment in the Mayo Constitution of 24 The year 1849 was probably the worst of April, 1849 states that reports from the those famine years in the Louisburgh locality say that descriptions have fallen area. The immediate cause of the death far short of the frightful scenes that were march was the expected arrival in witnessed. Louisburgh on Friday 30 March of two ‘commissioners’, Colonel Hogrove and That the people of the parish were starv- Captain Primrose. They were to inspect ing there can be no doubt. The Church the poorer people and certify them as of Ireland incumbent at Louisburgh, Rev. paupers, so entitling them to a ration of P.J. Callinan, had written to the Evening three pounds of meal each. For some Packet on 10 February, 1849 to say ‘… I reason the inspection was not made, am hourly beset with crawling skeletons and the hundreds of people were told begging for food’. Against such a back- that they must appear at Delphi Lodge ground one must allow the real possibil- (ten miles away) at 7am the following ity, if not indeed the probability, of hun- morning if they were to be certified. They dreds of deaths on the fatal journey less set out on foot along the mountain road than two months later. and pathway. The night and morning snowed. A writer (‘Ratepayer’) to the One further point is worthy of mention: Mayo Constitution on April 10th 1849 the only written source which favours the complained that seven people died on theory of hundreds of deaths on the that journey, nine more never reached ‘Doolough March’ is that of James Berry their homes and several of those who in ‘Tales of the West’ (Ed. Gertrude did ‘in a short time ceased to live’. He Horgan). Reputable historians would identifies nine victims: three members of look askance at his writings as embel- a Dillon family, Catherine Grady, Mary lished social history. There are, then, two McHale, James Flynn, Mrs Dalton, her conflicting lines of opinion about the son and daughter. According to this numbers who died on the fateful journey account the total number of deaths was on a snowy March night in 1849. Written no more than twenty on the road and an contemporary accounts mention twenty uncounted number in their homes. or more deaths. Local folklore often speaks of hundreds. Perhaps the truth There is, however, a strong folk tradition lies between. in the local Louisburgh community that the numbers who died that snowy night Leon O Morchain. on the Doolough Road should be count- Transport Shuttle buses will leave Louisburgh from 1pm, taking walkers to the start point at Doolough.