A graduation speech Councillor Bova would like to share…
Nya:wëh Sgë:nö’ Gagwe:goh,
Now that graduations for high school and college have come and gone, it’s time to celebrate those hard earned accomplishments with family and friends! Celebrate graduates, although please remember to be safe in all aspects! Ja:goh!
This year, I had the honor of attending the Seneca Nation’s recognition for high school and college graduates on both Territories. I had the privilege to speak at the Salamanca High School graduation ceremony. Many speakers offered words of encouragement, congratulated the efforts of graduates, shared memories, and offered guidance toward the future.
I would like to share one of the speeches given by our Seneca Language and History teacher at the Seneca Nation Education High School recognition dinner on the Allegany Territory. She is turtle clan and has taught at the Salamanca City Central School District for 16 years. If you had the opportunity to hear her speech firsthand, you would have been moved by her powerful words. She was on point and full of passion.
As a Councillor of the Seneca Nation I believe we should use our platform to share and lift up others words. Nya:wëh Mrs. Rachel Wolfe for your words, dedication, and passion.
“Nya:wëh for this opportunity to speak here tonight. I would first like to start off by acknowledging the discovery of the 215 Indian children whose remains were found buried on the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. I have been teaching about the Indian Boarding School era in my Seneca History curriculum for many years, but even still…this discovery has been shocking, sad, and hard to process.
It’s easy to be angry with what happened, and honestly there have been times where I have had to do a “self-check” on my own emotions. I place a lot of blame on the Indian Boarding School Era for the near extinction of our language, and overall Indigenous culture. During this time when “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” was an educational philosophy … I ask you to think about our ancestors…
In my classroom, I have a large panoramic picture of students who attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. It’s in the back of my classroom, looking out on our class. I DO NOT have the picture there to CELEBRATE them being in boarding school. I have the picture there so that symbolically they can see that we are trying to UNDO what happened to them! That we are still here, DESPITE what happened to them, and that we will never let what happened to them ever happen again!
Instead of focusing on the negative, I teach my students that despite tragic things in our history (such as Indian Boarding Schools), that we should be PROUD that in 2021, we still have our language, our ceremonies, our songs, and dances. Things that were threatened for so many years….we’ve managed to hold on to. It’s now our responsibility to continue and we owe it to those ancestors who persevered such atrocities. We’ve still got a lot of work to do…but it’s happening!”
