In Each Other’s Shadows

What’s so golden about the golden rule?

When the Covid-19 pandemic was raging in May 2020, the women operating the Navajo and Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund noticed a significant increase in donations to its GoFundMe page, with almost all the new money coming from Ireland.

The uptick in contributions was so strong that Cassandra Begay, the fund’s communication director, wondered if the website had been hacked. They eventually learned that the new donations started with a Twitter exchange between an Irish news reporter and a Navajo engineer.

Naomi O’Leary, European correspondent for The Irish Times, had tweeted, “Native Americans raised a huge amount in famine relief for Ireland at a time when they had very little. It’s time for us to come through for them now.” Aaron Yazzie of Los Angeles, the Navajo engineer, responded by tweeting the web address of the relief fund’s GoFundMe page.

The Navajo and Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund was a volunteer effort to get food and water to...