Labor Relations – Turtle Talk

For September 11: The Indigenous History Built into the World Trade Center

September 11, 2026September 7, 2026Wenona Singel

Lindsay, fourth-generation ironworker
Mohawk Name, Skanenratti (The Other Side of the River/Street)
Tintype by Melissa Cacciola
Reproduction photography by D. Primiano

Mohawk ironworkers helped build the original Twin Towers. After September 11, they returned to Ground Zero for rescue and recovery work, and they later helped build the new One World Trade Center.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum’s online Skywalkers exhibition documents that multigenerational history through tintype portraits, recorded voices, and an audio tour produced in English as well as Ahkwesáhsne and Kahnawá:ke. Also worth reading is the Museum’s profile of Lindsay LeBorgne, a fourth-generation ironworker and Kahnawà:ke Council Chief who worked twelve-hour shifts for five consecutive days at Ground Zero after returning home from a trip abroad four days after the attacks.

A 2023 hour-long interview with Lindsay LeBorgne on WBAI’s Deadline NYC is available here. He talks about what’s entailed with being Council Chief of the Kahnawà:ke, the Mohawk community in Brooklyn, his family history, his life as a New York ironworker, and his rescue and recovery work at Ground Zero after 9/11.

Additional Resource

Allan Downey, Indigenous Brooklyn: Ironworking, Little Caughnawaga, and Kanien’kehá:ka Nationhood in the Twentieth Century, American Quarterly, Vol. 75, Number 1, March 2023, pp. 27-50.

Happy Labor Day

September 7, 2026September 7, 2026Wenona Singel

Photographer David Grant Noble took a series of photos of Mohawk ironworkers in New York City in 1970. The workers were from Kahnawake Reserve. Below is a slideshow of his pictures.

Slideshow – Mohawk Steelworker Series

*David Grant Noble, The Mohawk Steelworker Series. http://www.davidgrantnoble.com*

In 1971, Noble was also invited to accompany Anishinaabeg from the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin for a day of gathering wild rice. On another occasion, he visited the Nett lake community in Minnesota during their wild rice harvest, where he accompanied Ira Isham and his family. Below is a slideshow of Noble’s photos from the manoomin harvest in both Tribal communities.

*David Grant Noble, The Ojibwe and Wild Rice Series. Children playing in canoe, Nett Lake, MN during the manoomin harvest. Photo by David Grant Noble at http://www.davidgrantnoble.com*

David Grant Noble, The Ojibwe and Wild Rice Series. A harvester poling through a field of wild rice. Photo by
David Grant Noble at http://www.davidgrantnoble.com

Click here to see the manoomin harvest slideshow.

Wilton Rancheria Files Cert Petition in Labor Dispute

July 13, 2026July 13, 2026Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the petition in Wilton Rancheria v. UNITE HERE:

Petition.pdf Download

Question presented:

Notwithstanding the deference afforded to arbitration awards, arbitrators lack the power to facially invalidate federal and state statutes. Similarly, courts defer to Tribal interpretation of Tribal law, as a critical element of longstanding policies upholding and safeguarding Tribal sovereignty. Does an arbitrator exceed his authority when he facially invalidates a duly-enacted Tribal law, especially when a court would not do so and when he would not be permitted to invalidate a duly-enacted federal or state statute?

Lower court materials here. Ninth Circuit unpublished opinion here.