Dance honors courage of the steelworkers

Guide Page 18

Jerry McDonald remembers that rain had just begun to fall when he and his fellow ironworker, Dennis LeBorgne, emerged from a 60-foot pit at Ground Zero. A few hundred firefighters, police officers and rescue workers were gathered around. They were saluting the "man basket" attached to a crane where a firefighter lay covered by an American flag.

The two Mohawks had just cut through rod and rebar, with tons of steel hovering above them, to remove him from the rubble.

"It's something I'll never forget," McDonald said, "the respect and the honor they had for the fallen fireman."

It had been three weeks since the collapse of the World Trade Center. McDonald, from Akwesasne (Wolf clan), and his colleague from Kahnawake, had volunteered for the clean-up task.

Nearly eight months later, McDonald is still working near Ground Zero but he's back to building things.

"I worked on the pedestrian bridge over the West Side Highway, and now I'm on a job at the Winter Garden atrium in the World Financial Center," he said. "It was badly damaged on 9/11."

The ironworker is a member of Local 440 in Utica, N. Y., where 270 of the 340 members are Mohawks. These Mohawks "boom out," or travel from their reserves in Ontario and Quebec to find work. Many of them are second-generation ironworkers, like McDonald, who started at age 17; others remember their grandfathers who were "booming out" in the 1930s.

In New York City, Mohawk ironworkers are legendary. Walk into any skyscraper, or drive over any bridge in the city, and you're treading on steel a Mohawk put there.

"We're Haudenosaunee, people of the longhouses," McDonald explained, using the word Mohawks call themselves, which refers to their traditional wood-frame dwellings. "We were always builders."

The peculiar talent Mohawks display on the high steel was discovered when Canadians began building bridges near Native land.

"We're not construction workers," McDonald explained. "It takes a special man to walk a beam and climb a column without losing your life."

Sitting in the lower Manhattan studio where McDonald and his fiancee Jeannie Calcano (Taino, Turtle Clan) teach a Native American dance class, McDonald recalled 9/11.

"I was on my way to work when I saw the first plane hit. My instinct was to go there. Many Mohawks saw it, and we all knew that those buildings were made out of steel, and heat melts steel."

By the time McDonald reached lower Manhattan, the first tower had fallen.

"We got close," he said, "and I saw other Mohawks standing around, but we couldn't get in." One week later, McDonald 's union sent him to Ground Zero.

"I was in the middle of Tower 1 and 2 as a foreman with a crew of 18," McDonald said. "In order to get to the building, we had to clear 15 storeys of steel and debris. You maneuvered yourself onto the steel, burned the holes, put the steel up in shackles, then hoisted it up with a crane-if you could find one."

Even three weeks after 9/11, it was nearly impossible to move cranes onto the site, so McDonald and his crew just cleared what they could.

"You didn't know how deep it was where you were working, or what was under you. You worked from the top down. You had to cut and slash, and watch out for bodies. It was perilous."

For Mohawks who practice traditional beliefs, it is important to honor the dead.

"Our people were carrying ceremonial tobacco and they made silent prayers," he said. "They asked for forgiveness from the spirits of the dead who wander until they're released. If a priest or a faith-keeper doesn't release those spirits, then we believe they're still wandering around."

But it wasn't just the dead who needed healing.

"If you had nightmares or dreams, or images of dead people you didn't know, you had to be cleansed," McDonald explained. "There are a few medicine men who work in the trade. They're pretty low profile, but the Mohawks know them and go to them if they need a blessing."

McDonald and his fellow ironwrkers sometimes talked about how strange it felt to clear the rubble at the WTC.

"We're definitely used to building," he laughed, "and Mohawks helped to put these up." In some ways, McDonald recalled, it was more dangerous to pull structures apart.

"The steel can be half- melted, bolts might be sheared. You had no idea of the integrity of the steel when you were walking on it. Even though it was the first time we ironworkers had ever dealt with something like this, in New York City, you're working with the best of the best. The crane operators will tell you that and so will the operating engineers."

On the high steel again, but still overlooking the devastation-the World Financial Center is across the street from Ground Zero- McDonald thinks about the land.

"Even though New York City is technically not a reservation, the earth belongs to us because it supports and nourishes everything in our life," he said. "So, as long as you're conscious of the earth, and you protect the environment you live in, and you think for seven generations ahead of time, then you are thinking about the earth." Seven generations is a measure all Mohawks honor; it derives from their creed, the Gayaneshakgowa or Great Law of Peace.

"The sky dome is our roof, and the earth is our mother. Anywhere we go, it's still our home, and it belongs to us, even though governments separate us by borders, states and fences. These are foreign concepts to us. The bones of our ancestors are under our feet."

When McDonald isn't on the high steel, he's dancing. Last year, he and his fiancee brought Eagle Dance-a theatrical production they co-produced-to Theater for the New City in lower Manhattan. The show honors Mohawk steelworkers. Someday soon, they hope to be performing it on Broadway. For McDonald, re-interpreting ceremonial eagle dances came easily.

"When you're up in the air, sometimes you have to call on an eagle," McDonald said, "when it gets windy, or if it's raining or you have to work onice. The eagle is closest to the Creator, and when the Mohawk builds a skyscraper, he is close to the Creator."