January 22, 2007

Pequots honor skywalkers

Don't Look Down

New Mashantucket Museum exhibit celebrates the art of 'skywalking'It's not that they are not afraid of heights. It's more that they've disciplined themselves to be comfortable working just one misstep away from a freefall. That's how many of the Mohawk Indians who have helped build some of the tallest buildings in the country, including most of the iconic, soaring architecture of New York City, have explained their generations-long tribal tradition of “walking the iron.”

At the Mashantucket Pequot Museum through May 27, a new exhibit, “Booming Out: Mohawk Ironworkers Build New York” tells some of that unusual story, how so many American Indians from upstate New York and Canada came to help build the skyline of one of the world's great cities.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:48 AM

    I'd love to see this exhibit. I saw a documentary not too long ago about the collapse of the Quebec Bridge in 1907 in which many Mohawk Nation of Canada steel workers were killed. The courage of these "skywalkers" should be honored and recognized more frequently.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Bridge

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  2. Anonymous5:27 AM

    writer fella: Was this song of praise in STAR WARS EPISODE 5 - THE CLONES STRIKE BACK or was it in STAR WARS EPISODE 1 - THE PHANTOM JEDI ?

    -anomynous

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  3. Re "How long before the obligatory Pequot-bashing comments appear?" I'm wondering that too.

    Russ, is there any chance Lucas got the name "Skywalker" from the Mohawk ironworkers?

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  4. Interesting. Are you hypothesizing these derivations or did Lucas actually state them?

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