Indian Country Today

This week's newscast covers a Mohawk ironworkers' contribution to the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy 25 years ago, new leadership at Indian Health Service and more.

📺 Watch here https://youtu.be/PHuwp1jo5uE?si=LzxmOhdn1OsL_lv_

ICT NEWSCAST | Sept. 11, 2026 | First Nations ground zero workers, Indigenous candidates and more The ICT Newscast for Friday, September 11, 2026 covers the Mohawk K...

Building New York's skyline was a family legacy for Lindsay LeBorgne. The fourth-generation Mohawk ironworker followed his father and grandfather into the trade, joining generations of Skywalkers who helped raise the city, including the World Trade Center towers.

LeBorgne was in Amsterdam on a trade mission for the Kahnawáke council when he watched the towers collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. Five days later, he headed to Ground Zero, where he spent a week working 12-hour shifts in streets buried beneath white-gray ash.

As the country marks 25 years since the attacks, LeBorgne looks back on the buildings his family helped raise and the devastation he witnessed after they fell.

Read the story: https://ictnews.org/news/mohawk-skywalker-reflects-on-9-11-everything-looked-like-a-moonscape/

📷 Lindsay LeBorgne, Mohawk, at cleaning up at Ground Zero in 2001.

Lindsay LeBorgne watched the World Trade Center towers collapse from half a world away, then returned days later to help clear the remains of buildings his Mohawk family had helped construct.

Mohawk Skywalker reflects on 9/11: ‘Everything looked like a moonscape’ - ICT 9/11 anniversary is personal for a fourth-generation Mohawk ironworker who helped build the World Trade Center towers

’Unceded’ art takes aim at land acknowledgements and more this week’s Indigenous A&E column from ICT.

INDIGENOUS A&E: ‘Unceded’ art, music tour, Apache images - ICT A biweekly column from ICT with the latest news from the arts and entertainment world

Twenty-five years later, Renae Ditmer still remembers the brilliant blue sky over Washington. It stood in stark contrast to the alarms echoing through the Pentagon and the smoke rising beyond its walls.

She remembers the strangers who helped her make the long journey home, the colleague who fell to his knees when he found her alive and the families left to measure time by everything that came before and after Sept. 11.

In a deeply personal reflection, the citizen of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians writes about survival, the fragile ordinariness of a morning that became history and what the country has forgotten about the unity born from tragedy.

Read the story: https://ictnews.org/news/never-forget-the-view-from-inside-the-pentagon-on-9-11/

Former New York Times reporter Charlie LeDuff, Anishinaabe, witnessed firsthand the catastrophic events that unfolded on September 11, 2001. In the days following, he joined the community in locating survivors and contributing reports to the NYT project "Portraits of Grief," a collection of short stories on the people who died.
📺 Watch the full archive interview at https://youtu.be/6d_My4eQ5u8

#911

Native students and tribes say federal education changes broke the law and harmed schools.

Tribes, students: Indian education changes break the law - ICT Renewed federal lawsuit challenges Trump administration’s Bureau of Indian Education layoffs and restructuring of treaty-mandated programs

A look back — and a look ahead — from an ICT contributor who was in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

‘Never Forget’: The view from inside the Pentagon on 9/11 - ICT Friends and strangers pulled together to offer help and solace after the worst attack ever on American soil

Three children taken 1,800 miles from Fort Peck to Carlisle in 1890 were welcomed home this week by generations of their community.

‘We’re all related’: Montana welcome greets children home from Carlisle after more than 100 years - ICT The three teens died at the notorious boarding school after being shipped off from the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes