default-hero-image

Rotinonhsión:ni Ironworkers: A Digital History of Indigenous Resurgence

LRW 1003 (Community Room)

20/03/2023, 3:00 pm - TO - 5:00 pm

Organizer: Faculty of Humanities

My Calendar

For over a century, ironworking has been a principal industry for Haudenosaunee community members. Beginning in the 1880s Haudenosaunee men entered the high-steel workforce and it quickly became the principal source of employment for Haudenosaunee males who often traveled to jobs in the northeastern United States.

Particularly in New York City, as Haudenosaunee men entered the Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers Union,
ironworking ensured a steady stream of stable employment that encouraged families to relocate to the city. By the 1920s Haudenosaunee families from Akwesasne and especially Kahnawake began relocating to the neighbourhood of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn where they opened a string of boarding houses and established the new community of “Little Caughnawaga.”

Utilizing historical methodologies inspired by Indigenous Studies, this presentation and associated digital animation intends to demonstrate the elaborate intersection in which ironworking and “Little Caughnawaga” served in redefining and articulating Haudenosaunee nationhood, family practices, gender and self-determination.