Overview:
Levi Rickert reflects on the Native response to 9/11, the service of Native veterans and the human and financial costs of the wars that followed.
Opinion
Most Americans who were alive on Sept. 11, 2001 — 25 years ago today — remember where they were and what they were doing when they found out that a jet plane hit the World Trade Center’s north tower at 8:46 a.m.
I was working at a mortgage company in Grand Rapids that morning. There was a small portable television in my boss’s office. He called and told me to come into his office to watch the news unfolding in New York City. We watched NBC’s Today Show with intense interest. Television commentators initially believed the crash was a horrible aeronautical accident.
Then, 18 minutes later, another passenger jet struck the south tower on live television. We knew then that the crashes were intentional. America was under attack.
Like millions of Americans, we were glued to the television as news reports came that another plane hit the Pentagon. Then a United Airlines flight crashed into a farmer’s field in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew members tried to retake control of the plane from hijackers. The flight was headed toward Washington, with the Capitol building its likely target.
For Native Americans, 9/11 was another reminder that we hold dual citizenship: We are citizens of our tribal nations and of the United States.
On the day of the attacks, there were several meetings involving American Indian tribal leaders scheduled in and around Washington, D.C. The Navajo-Hopi Observer ran a statement by Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council Edward T. Begay informing Navajo Nation citizens that “President Kelsey A. Begaye, several Council Delegates and staff are in Washington, D.C., and were scheduled to attend an important policy meeting today.”
“Everyone in the Navajo delegation is safe and the Window Rock offices are in contact with them. We are making plans to transport the Navajo Nation delegation back to Window Rock, Ariz., as soon as all flight restrictions are lifted.”
Indian Country’s connection to the World Trade Center began decades before 9/11. Hundreds of Mohawk ironworkers helped to build the Twin Towers during the late 1960s and into the 1970s.
After the towers fell, many of their descendants lent their hands to clean up the wreckage at what became known as Ground Zero. The Mohawk story was later documented in an exhibition at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.
After 9/11, Native Americans enlisted in the U.S. military at a higher percentage than their non-Native counterparts. Osage photojournalist Steven Clevenger spent three years chronicling the involvement of Native Americans during the Iraq War. His project resulted in America’s First Warriors: Native Americans and Iraq.
Fascinated by modern Native American warrior culture, he wrote that the definition of a warrior “has been basically the same since pre-Columbian times: ‘A warrior is the protector of his people.’”
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the story of death did not end with the destruction perpetrated by the terrorists that day.
The 9/11 attacks triggered devastating violence that spread beyond U.S. shores. The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University released a report on September 2, estimating that some 940,000 people were killed directly by violence in the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere between 2001 and 2023.
While those numbers are staggering, the institute estimates another 3.6 million to 3.8 million people died indirectly as a result of those wars, bringing the total estimated death toll to between 4.5 million and 4.7 million people.
Wars cost money that could go toward the progress of global societies. The institute’s Costs of War Project estimates that the U.S. government spent or was obligated to spend more than $8 trillion on the post-9/11 wars.
Native Americans know violence in America did not begin 25 years ago. Our ancestors fought back hard against violence perpetrated against them in defense of their land. The insurrection on January 6, 2021, proved that some Americans are willing to commit evil acts against other Americans for political purposes.
As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we know we must stay united against the enemies abroad and those among us. We must stay united for right’s sake.
God bless the United States of America. We are truly all related.
Thayék gde nwéndëmen – We are all related.
