DATE=10/24/03

TYPE=English Feature

NUMBER=7-37977

TITLE=Celebrating Native American Workers on the High Steel

BYLINE=David Sommerstein

TELEPHONE=260-1623 (Editor)

DATELINE=Canastota, New York

EDITOR=Faith Lapidus

CONTENT=

_

INTRO: For generations, Mohawk and other Native Americans have built America's most famous buildings and bridges, including the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. They work the "high steel" - a dangerous profession practiced high above the ground. The skill and craft of ironworking took center stage last month near Syracuse, New York in a sort of Ironworker Olympics. David Sommerstein was there as men competed in events like knot-tying, wrench throwing, and the 9-meter column climb.

AUDIO: CUT 1 SFX clinking and clanging of spud throw

TEXT: On a grassy field in Canastota, New York, men in jeans and work shirts line up for the first event of the Ironworker Festival. It's the spud throw. Competitors try to hurl a wrench into a wooden target 6 meters away.

AUDIO: CUT 1 SFX Back up full for wrenches clanging against a target, Judge: "Number 30! What local union?" then another throw…

TEXT: Mike Swamp runs the Ironworkers' Union office on the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation in northern New York.

AUDIO: CUT 2 SWAMP (w/ competition in background)

It's called an erection wrench. Ironworkers carry that around to make their bolts, to make the holes in the beam, and what we do here is simulate what happens if they do drop it to the ground, the guys will pick it up and send it back up in the air.

TEXT: About a hundred ironworkers and their families are here from all over New York State to celebrate their trade and engage in a little friendly competition. A bigger International Ironworker Festival is hosted each year by Mackinaw City, Michigan. But this one, put on by the nearby Oneida Indian Nation, has a different focus. It highlights the contributions of Native Americans to the country's buildings and bridges.

AUDIO: CUT 4 SFX grabbing bolts from a bucket

TEXT: Mike Swamp's son, Owen, grabs a handful of steel bolts for the bolt throw. He started ironworking five years ago.

AUDIO: CUT 4 OWEN SWAMP

It's in our blood, I guess. I dunno, my father was an ironworker, both my grandfathers were ironworkers. Part of our lives, y'know…

TEXT: The history of Mohawks on the high steel goes back to the 1880s. The French were building a bridge across the St. Lawrence River near Montreal. Mohawks on the job scrambled nimbly across steel beams dozens of meters above the river, reportedly without fear. Marilyn John, an Oneida Nation leader and wife of a retired ironworker, says after the turn of the century, men followed steel shipments to job sites in New York and other cities.

AUDIO: CUT 5 JOHN

You had to have a living. You would follow the "red iron" (eds: steel) wherever the jobs were, on the railroad or on trucks, you would follow the "red iron" and then you would try to get a job wherever that iron would stop.

TEXT: Their reputation grew, and soon Mohawks and other Native Americans were laying steel beams on the world's tallest buildings.

AUDIO: CUT 6 SFX CONTESTANT & JACOBS

You don't know the becker hitch?

OK, let me see you put a stopper hitch…

TEXT: Peter Jacobs hunches over a couple of ropes at the knot-tying event. He says he's proud of the Native tradition in ironworking, adding that it's still among the best jobs men on reservations can get. But he doubts Mohawks are any less fearful of heights than other people.

AUDIO: CUT 7 JACOBS

There's white guys out there who are just as good. There's Native Americans from all over the country. There's African-Americans, Puerto Ricans. It's up to the individual themselves, how good they want to be. You have it or you don't have it.

TEXT: Marilyn John jokes there may be something to the legend that Native Americans don't have acrophobia.

AUDIO: CUT 8 JOHN

And they say, and I don't know if this is true, but there's something in the equilibrium in the nose. People make fun of Indian noses, that they're so large and stuff and that's what they say, there's something in the… I dunno [laughs]…

TEXT: Seriously, though, she says it's important to honor ironworkers because of the toll it takes on them.

AUDIO: CUT 9 JOHN & REPORTER

The profession does damage to you. Not everybody, but if you look around, there are a lot of guys limping, with canes and all that kind of stuff, 'cause the first thing to go are the knees.

RPTR: Why the knees? Because they're always pulling up on stuff?

Pulling up, and if you watch that column climb, that's what they use, their knees.

AUDIO: CUT 10 SFX COLUMN CLIMB Crowd at column, then sound of climber getting started

TEXT: All day, a buzz surrounds the 9-meter column climb. When the event starts, a couple hundred people encircle a steel girder crowned with an American flag. One by one, men strap into a harness, scrape the dirt off the soles of their work boots, and scramble up.

AUDIO: CUT 10 SFX COLUMN CLIMB People cheering on an ironworker going up

TEXT: Competitors ring a bell at the top and slide down. Some guys climb up in seconds like spidermen. Others slip and heave their way up.

AUDIO: CUT 10 SFX COLUMN CLIMB More climbing & crowd sounds

TEXT: The atmosphere is more supportive than competitive. Dick Oddo, a hulk of a man with a baby face, says one old-timer got teary-eyed because it was the first time he'd received public recognition in a career spanning decades. Mr. Oddo says while the events are fun, the honor and support are what matters in such a dangerous profession.

AUDIO: CUT 11 ODDO

We all watch each other's back. A lot of tradition here. Million years of experience right here… passed on from generation to generation. It's pride. That's all it is, just pride in the business. It feels good to be an ironworker.

TEXT: For Main Street, I'm David Sommerstein at the Ironworker Festival in Canastota, New York.

AUDIO: CUT 12 SFX CLIMBING COLUMN more sound of cheering on ironworker climbing column, then bell ringing…fade out