Derise Waterman Is Determined to Keep Indigenous Language Alive
October 9, 2023 | By Brooke Johnpier | tapinto.net
ST. BONAVENTURE, NY — “If we don’t save the language, it’s gonna be gone.”
Derise Waterman heard that from her Seneca language teachers from grade school through high school.
When she was a student at Silver Creek Elementary School, Waterman was told that less than 30 fluent speakers of the Seneca language were still alive.
Waterman, who started learning the Seneca language as a 3-year-old attending daycare on the Cattaraugus Territory of the Seneca Nation in the Town of Irving, took that warning to heart. She kept studying the language as a student at William G. Houston Middle School and at Lake Shore High School. And then she went to Seneca language “immersion programs.”
This academic year, Waterman became an adjunct instructor at St. Bonaventure University, assigned to teach the two elementary Seneca language courses offered under the minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies.
A member of the Turtle Clan, Waterman was given a Seneca name that fits her clan: Jagodawe:h, which means “she’s swimming over there.” The fact that she has a Seneca name is a great honor.
“I got my name in 2019,” Waterman said. “They are very strict about names, and not everyone gets one.”
Waterman lived in the territory, also known as Bucktown, until she graduated from high school. At the age of 18, she moved to Allegany.
Growing up in the Seneca territory, Waterman picked up some words that everyone in the nation learns.
“Unfortunately, the nation no longer offers the language in elementary and middle school anymore because there’s not enough teachers,” Waterman said.
As she progressed through her schooling, that number of 30 fluent speakers dwindled down, and the number left just wasn’t enough.
“Since I picked up the language really well, I figured that I should try to save the language,” Waterman said. “I felt that it was my responsibility as a Seneca to not only learn the language, but to teach it.”
Waterman recalled that when she was younger she feared that she would never be able to speak Seneca. But she kept on learning.
Her educators included Sam Jacobs, Renee Seneca, Mike Jones, Moe Cook, Whitney Nephew and Sandy (Jimmerson) Dowdy. Waterman taught her first Seneca language courses as a volunteer at the Faithkeepers School, which Dowdy and her husband Lehman founded in 1998. She and Dowdy keep in touch, and Waterman said that Dowdy teaches her something new each time they meet.
Waterman is the second member of the Seneca Nation to teach the language at St. Bonaventure. Sara Droney, who taught during the 2022-23 academic year, was the first.
Because New York State does not offer an official teaching certification for the Seneca language, people, such as Waterman and Droney, obtain a general teaching certification through college. Since the need for Seneca language teachers is so pressing, many learners of the language become teachers before they can obtain that certification. Waterman is among them and plans to get teaching certification soon.
St. Bonaventure’s NAIS program director, Oleg Bychkov, a professor of theology and Franciscan Studies, said Droney and Waterman were hired on the recommendations of the Seneca Nation’s language department because the nation “is the only source of experts in the Seneca language.”
Bychkov explained, “Both Sara and Derise went through their intensive ‘language immersion’ program and are considered ‘new’ fluent speakers of Seneca.”
“New speakers” of Seneca are those who did not acquire the language by growing up in Seneca-speaking households.
Just before she began teaching at St. Bonaventure, Waterman gave birth to a son.
She has every intention of teaching him Seneca at home.
