McMaster professor explores history of Indigenous ‘skywalkers’ in new film

When Allan Downey looks at New York City's Empire State Building or Rockefeller Centre, he doesn't see icons of American industry, but rather symbols of Indigenous independence.

When I see these buildings, I reframe them as the scaffolding of Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty, because Indigenous peoples built them," said Downey, an associate professor of history at McMaster University.

Downey has produced a short animated film and is writing a book on the history of the Indigenous ironworkers, specifically Haudenosaunee workers, from Canada who did vital work in constructing the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and other iconic landmarks.

He says those workers - who became famous as skywalkers" because of the dangerous steel work they did while building those structures at great heights - had to assert their territorial rights to be on the job sites. A famous photograph featuring workers sitting on a beam high above the city during the construction of the Rockefeller Center in 1932 includes Peter Rice, a Mohawk ironworker from Kahnawake, Que.

The early 20th century saw Indigenous people in Canada being excluded from urban settings, Downey said, because they were regarded in pejorative terms as being primitive" and the antithesis of modern city life.

But the truth is there is a long Indigenous history in urban settings," he said.

There were good jobs to be had in building bridges, skyscrapers and other massive works of steel and iron, particularly in construction boom towns like New York City. Although it's located in the United States, Indigenous ironworkers leaned on treaties that recognized their territories crossed the Canada-U.S. border. Those treaties held up in court challenges, giving the workers the right to walk the high steel.

The reason why they're able to be there to build these things in the first place is because they are activating their self-determination," Downey said.

Downey began researching the history of Indigenous ironworkers while doing work on the history of lacrosse. He said he kept encountering stories of Indigenous players who had connections to the ironworkers, including many who worked on those buildings.

Records show that Haudenosaunee men got into ironwork in 1885 when the Canadian Pacific Railway built a rail bridge through Indigenous land to connect the Island of Montreal with Kahnawake. Those communities negotiated with the railway to ensure their people got jobs to build the bridge.

They were going to be dispossessed of their land regardless, so they got the best deal they could and participated in the project" Downey said. And that is their entry point into the industry of ironworking."

With massive steelworks going up across North America, these Haudenosaunee ironworkers travelled to the United States for work.

It was good work, good paying jobs, to support their families," said Downey.

Once in New York City, the workers established their own community, known as Little Caughnawaga in Brooklyn, bringing more of their friends and family from Canada.

But American authorities were not thrilled with what they considered illegal immigrants setting up shop.

Downey said in 1926, Mohawk ironworker Paul Diabo was arrested and charged with being an illegal immigrant. However, Diabo asserted that under the terms of a 1794 treaty, he had every right to move freely between Canada and the U.S.

Downey said the treaty recognized Haudenosaunee territory existed despite the new colonial borders, and Haudenosaunee people could move through that territory without needing permission from the U.S. government.

He won in court," Downey said.

That court victory, which he sees as Indigenous people successfully asserting their own sovereignty within the American system, allowed the community of workers to thrive in New York City. The community became world famous, Downey said, thanks to a 1952 National Geographic story about Mohawk ironworkers.

That really kind of thrust them into the American public consciousness and international consciousness," he said. Non-Indigenous peoples were being exposed to this history, to these individuals, that had actually been in the urban environments for decades."

As highways between Canada and the U.S. were built, many ironworkers opted to travel back and forth, rather than stay in Little Caughnawaga. In time, the community shrunk, but Downey said the presence of Indigenous ironworkers remains and some worked on the new World Trade Center building erected in 2013 to replace one of the buildings destroyed on 9/11.

Downey will be screening his film, Rotinonhsion:ni Ironworkers and giving a talk about the history of Little Caughnawaga on March 20 from 3 to 5 p.m. in the L.R. Wilson Hall Community Room (1003) at McMaster. Registration is free.

Grant LaFleche is an investigative reporter with The Spectator. Reach him via email: glafleche@torstar.ca