A pair of Native-American tribes have been left humbled and amazed by donations to their Covid-19 pandemic appeal from Ireland – including one for $100,000 from U2’s drummer Larry Mullen Jr.
The Navajo and Hopi tribes – in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico launched the appeal in March after the virus saw both tribes lose multiple elders to the pandemic.
Over recent weeks the appeal has been flooded with donations from Ireland in memory of how another tribe, the Choctaw, donated a total of $170 to Ireland at the height of the Great Famine.
Now, the Navajo-Hopi appeal organisers said the pledge worth the equivilantof €90,000 from Larry Mullen alone will fund their work for more than 1,000 vulnerable families for almost a fortnight.
They say it will “fund a week’s worth of deliveries of food and water to about 1000 Navajo and Hopi households with high risk, vulnerable, or COVID-positive family members.”
The Navajo Nation has now exceeded New York and New Jersey as the US jurisdiction with the most Covid-19 cases per capita.
