On June 18, 2021, the Onondaga Nation School’s (ONS) graduating class celebrated graduating from ONS. This celebration is always a mix of happy and bittersweet as the students begin the journey to the high school. But this graduation also marked the ONS’s fourth grade teacher, Nancy Powless’ retirement after 41 years of teaching at the school.
“I have always wanted to be a teacher,” said Nancy Powless. “Teaching at the Nation school has been a dream come true.”
ONS has always been a part of Nancy and her family. Her grandmother Cecelia Powless was the school librarian, her aunt, Beverly Powless, was the school secretary and her mother, Helen Powless, was the school’s first Onondaga Culture teacher.
“ONS has always been a part of our family,” said Powless. “It seemed like a second home with so much family, relatives, and friends who worked and attended school there.”
But it always wasn’t that way.
In the 1960’s, the LaFayette School District was in the early stages of partnership with the Onondaga Nation and the New York State
Education Department. The school district began a bussing program on the Onondaga Nation. If you lived on the Onondaga Nation but lived more than a mile away, you were bussed to the elementary school in LaFayette. Nancy’s family lived just over a mile away from the school, so she would have to go to school in the town of LaFayette.
“We are Upper Hemlockers,” said Nancy recalling being bussed to LaFayette for school. “I was so scared. My brother Barry and I had to go too. We didn’t want to go and I was so sad of having to get on the bus to go away to school. The bus driver used to talk to me to calm me down as we traveled to LaFayette.”
The experience really deepened her love for ONS. Her parents, Chief Irving Powless Jr. and Helen Powless, were able to lobby to have their children go to school on the Nation. Nancy and her brother were finally able to attend ONS and graduate from there after sixth grade.
“I loved going to school and it was comfortable being around friends and cousins,” recalled Powless. “But the school was different then. The school was just like any other school in the United States. The school didn’t offer any Onondaga language and culture classes, we were not taught anything about ourselves as native people. As a matter of fact, we had a Spanish language class”
Once In high school, the realization that ONS should be more of a reflection of the community it services began to rise.
The Onondaga Council became more involved in running of the school. The Council invited a commission to examine the interworking’s of the school. The commission examined the staff, the learning material, the curriculum, and the library. They found that the school, named the Onondaga Indian School, had no connection to the community, nor books that reflected Native American culture, and had no native classroom teachers.
“The Council wanted to see a change at our school,” recalled Nancy Powless. “But the District did not agree to the changes that we all felt needed to happen. That’s when we started a boycott to try to make a change for ONS.”
Powless and her classmates at the LaFayette High School did not go to school. They continued the boycott until the School District agreed to meet with the Onondaga Nation Council on the issues they saw were important to making the school reflect the integral cultural teachings that could happen at the school.
But upon graduating high school, Nancy Powless made a decision to make a bigger change at the school. She decided to attend SUNY Cortland to become a teacher.
“When I was in college, I would come back and work with our first Onondaga language teacher Gowhiani, Audrey Shenandoah,” said Powless. “I really loved teaching and I saw how much the kids enjoyed learning about us as oñgwehoñwe people. There were no other natives as classroom teachers then. I knew it was time for that to change.”
Upon graduation from SUNY Cortland, Nancy was hired has the First-grade teacher for the Nation school. And faculty and students soon
realized Nancy’s second love; music. Nancy began charting different songs, poetry, and even authored a few songs of her own.
“If they could sing it, they could read it,” stated Powless smiling. “Singing brought together our class while learning to read as well as singing our own social songs.”
Current Onondaga Nation School Principal, Simone Gonyea was at student in one of Nancy’s early First-grade classrooms.
“Being in Ms. Powless’s class was awesome,” recalled Principal Gonyea. “She wanted the best from you because she believed that we could do it. Later, when I became the Kindergarten teacher at ONS, she was a great mentor and collaborator. Nancy is awesome.”
When Nancy attended school, there was family there. When she taught at ONS, it was more of the same.
Nancy taught her younger brother Neal Powless. Her brother Barry Powless was the culture teacher there for a few years. She taught her daughter Awenheeyoh Powless and her grandson Deheanhyanekhen. And for the past 28 years has taught alongside her brother Brad and sister-in-law JoAnne.
“Nancy has always been a role model for us boys,” said Brad Powless. “She was the first of our family to graduate college. That showed me that is possible and that if you work hard, you can accomplish difficult things.”
“My sister Nancy has always loved teaching,” added Brad Powless. “She would always be working to make her classroom better. When I was the Third-grade teacher, we were able to collaborate with grades K-3 and do some amazing projects and learning with the students. During our team meetings she would say, ‘There are no bad ideas in brainstorming, but..’ Then we’d have a big laugh.”
About 15 years ago, Nancy switched from teaching First grade to teaching Fourth grade. A move that at first surprised but soon adapted to. Nancy’s classroom featured reading and writing as well as, singing. This time students would be singing about parts of speech or mathematical operations.
“I really benefited from Nancy being my mentor teacher next door,” said JoAnne Powless, ONS’ Fifth grade teacher. “Whatever happened in Fourth Grade was magical. The students came to me already loving to read novels and stories. She did that for all the students in her classroom including my own three children. I will truly miss walking next door to get advice or just to catch up. All of us will really miss her in the fall.”
After 41 years, we all will.