This issue inaugurates the seventy-fifth year of American Quarterly. In the past three-quarters of a century, the field of American studies has been a site of vibrant exchange of ideas and gone through dynamic changes in terms of the agents of knowledge production and objects of study, the approaches to archives and tools of analysis, and the framing of questions and articulations of arguments. The six essays in this issue perfectly exemplify the kinds of scholarship enabled by both the accumulation of knowledge through the generations and the bold challenges to, and departures from, existing modes of analysis. The six essays all interrogate, in various contexts and through diverse approaches, the politics and expressions of the nation, state, capital, rights, body, and life.
Lunch atop a Skyscraper
By Allan Downey
Lunch atop a Skyscraper is one of the most iconic photographs ever produced, yet the identities of the men appearing in the image is shrouded in mystery and by conflicting claims. One thing that is relatively certain is that at least one Indigenous ironworker appears in the photograph. The Indigenous man appearing in the photograph is tentatively identified as Peter Rice from Kahnawà:ke (middle), his identity having been asserted by multiple documents and personal interviews with his family. Some archival documents put the number of Indigenous ironworkers in the photograph at as high as three, but verifying this claim has proven to be extremely difficult.
The ironworker identified as Peter Rice, from Kahnawà:ke, in Lunch atop a Skyscraper. Artwork by Saki Murotani, from Allan Downey and Carlee Loft, dirs. Rotinonshón:ni Ironworkers (2020) digital animation, 6 min.
While the article “Indigenous Brooklyn: Ironworking, Little Caughnawaga, and Kanien’kehá:ka Nationhood in the Twentieth Century” is not focused on this photograph specifically, it seeks to address the obscurity of urban Indigenous histories represented, in part, by this photo and the historical notion that Indigenous peoples were and are antithetical to “modern” spaces. Who were these Indigenous ironworkers? Where were they coming from, if not New York City? What were their experiences and what are their stories? How did they enact their nationhood and self-determination in these spaces? By working with several Indigenous communities, organizations, and knowledge holders, I have attempted to answer some of these questions over the past five years of research and writing. Ultimately, the article confronts the notion of Indigenous absence in urban and cosmopolitan spaces and argues that together, these urban spaces and associated livelihoods, have played a central role in the way Indigenous peoples cultivated and reimagined Indigenous nationhood, self-determination, and sovereignty throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The publication of the article is one way I hope to reorient the urban history of Indigenous peoples. Another is through the digital animation Rotinonshón:ni Ironworkers which is grounded in the community-based research and archival work done for this article. Created in 2020, this award-winning animation was co-directed and co-written by myself and Carlee Kawinehta Loft, with artwork by Saki Murotani, in an attempt to reach a wider public, especially Indigenous youth.
Both the article and the video are examples of what I, and other Indigenous historians, call a resurgent history—that is, Indigenous history from the inside. It is a history that is not centered on colonialism but rather enforces an “intellectual sovereignty” to contribute to the revitalization of Indigenous stories, communities, and self-determination. You can find out more about the film project at www.indigenousironworkers.com.