Indians - Tumblr Posts
The Mohawks who Built Manhattan
Manhattan’s building boom in the Roaring Twenties relied on Mohawk Indians to get the job done.
Mohawks got into construction in 1886, when the Canadian Pacific Railroad needed land on the Kahnawake Reservation near Montreal for a bridge it was building. In return, the company agreed to hire tribesmen to unload supplies. But the men climbed up the bridge every chance they got. “[T]hey would climb up and onto the spans and walk around up there as cool and collected as the toughest of our riveters,” recalled a bridge official in a 1949 article by Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker. They may have just been teenagers daring each other to climb the 150 ft. structure and “walk the iron,” but their fearlessness impressed the foremen, who were always short of reliable workers. Riveters had the most difficult and dangerous jobs and were hard to find, and by the time the bridge was built, a dozen Kahnawakes—enough for three riveting gangs—were trained.
They kept training apprentices, and by the 1920s, when skyscrapers were shooting up everywhere in New York, hundreds of them were commuting the 350 miles from the reservation to the city every week. They worked on all the big construction projects of the time: the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, RCA Building, Daily News Building, the United Nations, Madison Square Garden, and the Triborough, Henry Hudson, and Hell’s Gate Bridges—among others. The building boom gave way to Depression-era public works projects and then postwar prosperity.
The work paid well, and many Kahnawakes and neighboring Akwesasnes took up residence in Brooklyn. By 1960, some 800 were living around Fourth and Atlantic Avenues. Grocery stores stocked Mohawk foods and churches offered services in their native languages.
The World Trade Center was the last major project to be built with substantial Indian help. By the 1970s, rents were pricing them out of the city and admissions tests for union training programs favored the school-educated over those with a more vocational background. Some workers believe that in another decade there will be no Mohawks on New York building sites any more.
Tsuu T'ina mother and daughter. Ca.1900. Alberta, Canada.
Simple explanation of the bills that farmers in India are protesting - in TikTok form!
I love seeing the oceans of red and all the hammer sickles flying over the Indian farmers protests. It's such an inspiring sight, I love that thing, this just stands for hope and justice, peace and equality and they won big.
God forbid you people portray Indian people as queer, God forbid you show them as disabled, God forbid you show them without an accent to mock every five minutes, God forbid you portray them as something else other than a doctor, engineer, scientist or some mathematic genius, God forbid you depict Indian culture beyond cow piss-drinking, smell curry eating, demonic rituals, God forbid you portray Indian People as human.
While the UK does have resources to study better it's because they took way our chance to build our own. They agree with the French government to give back colonised stolen items yet don't do the same. It sucks. But there is hope. We have to have some. They'll learn. Some already have. Look at Cambridge's India Studies under IGCSE.
LITERALLY EVERYONE BORN IN ENGLAND IS RACIST
THANK YOU. (And, to anyone reading this, don’t fucking say “well, not everyone.” Fuck off. It’s just like ACAB. Maybe not all, but MORE than enough that it’s a problem, and we shall say everyone if we fucking have to.
God, this is like the main reason I never want to study in London/the UK. I’m sick of them. I’m sick of my mom telling me Indophobic shit about how they took away all our rights, all our gold, all our treasures, all our values, all our culture. I’m sick of that bullshit. I’m sick of your preppy white boys with elbow pads. I’m sick of everyone romanticizing their accent and then throwing a stereotypically heavy Indian accents into TV shows for laughs (Big Bang Theory, I love Sheldon Cooper, but I’m looking at you).
I’m sick of movies pretending Indian immigrants don’t know how to use fucking elevator buttons (Million Dollar Arm and so many others). I’m sick of my mom being numb when she tells me how India was blessed with incredible natural resources, only for the British to come and steal it all away from us. I’m sick of listening to people talk about/quoting Ghandi with no fucking idea what they’re saying, and pronouncing it like “Gandy.” Wtf is Gandy. Get away from me. I’m sick of white people seeing pictures of modern India’s city, including Mumbai (where my parents emigrated from) and looking at us/it like we’re kicked puppies, like “oh, they’re so poor, and it’s so dirty, and wow, we should donate and give you hugs, you poor thing.” Like NO. Fuck you. You did this to us! You created the fucking caste system! You’ve thrown us into poverty with no remorse.
Even to this day, Indian culture is blended with British culture. And sometimes it’s all in good fun, like how my parents eat those digestive cookies (sounds gross, but are actually really good), except we call them Marie Biscuit, but sometimes it’s not. It’s really fucking not. It’s heartbreaking and exhausting and upsetting. I’m sick of people mispronouncing our names, disrespecting us, making fun of curry or bonus, calling us curry, making jokes about arranged marriages, doing the fucking Indian accent like a racist, asking us how to speak “Indian” or asking if we’re “Hindi.” I’m sick of people calling it chai tea. CHAI MEANS TEA. I’m sick of people making studying Asian jokes. I’m sick of people making fun of meditation and chakras and third eyes like idiots. You can’t have your seven chakras aligned, you dolt. You’re not an all-knowing being.
You’re an ignorant prick and asshole who appropriates our culture and thinks it’s funny. You only like our music and our clothes and our culture when it benefits you. You only “care” when it helps YOU.
And if you think I’m being “harsh,” you’ll find sympathy somewhere after shit in the dictionary. I don’t want you here.
@sunapollo This is for you, dear. Don’t you dare let your anons tear you down. I stand with you. ❤