Ty Bowen is a non-traditional student at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford working toward a teaching degree, but he’s already teaching the campus community about where he comes from – the Allegany Territory of the Seneca Nation of Indians.
The territory is narrow a strip of land along both sides of the Allegheny River in New York state that forms the northern perimeter of Allegany State Park. It is less than 20 miles from campus and also a world away.
Bowen was raised primarily by his grandparents in Salamanca, N.Y., an unusual small city that rents its land from the Seneca Nation. The Seneca are the largest of six Indigenous nations that formed the Haudenosaunee (also known by the French name Iroquois) Confederacy. The land along the West Branch of the Tunungwant Creek that is now Pitt-Bradford was also once considered Haudenosaunee land.
He remembers his great-grandfather, Ralph Bowen, who was among the Seneca who opposed the construction of the Kinzua Dam, which was completed in 1965 and flooded 9,000 acres of Seneca land and caused hundreds of Seneca to be moved.
“No one wanted to listen to him,” Bowen said, “but he just fought. He was selfless and wise and always made good decisions for other people.” Even though Bowen’s great-grandfather saw the Seneca lose their fight with the federal government, he taught his great-grandson that “you may have an impact on a lot of people.”
Bowen’s great-grandfather also told him stories about surviving his time at the Thomas Indian School near Irving, N.Y. Indian boarding schools were created to assimilate Indigenous children into white American culture and where abuses often took place. The boarding schools created a distrust of education within Indigenous people that lasts until today, Bowen said.
“Even though he was exposed to the ugly side, [his great-grandfather] did see education could be beautiful and help our people,” Bowen said. Bowen’s grandmother, aunt and mother all went to college, which he said gave him more exposure to higher education than many Seneca have
“I was exposed to all the options,” he said. “From a very young age, I realized how important choices are.” Indigenous people are more likely to be caught in a generational cycle of poverty, he said, and education can supply a way to break that cycle.
Bowen, 26, said he learned a lot about responsibility growing up and helping his grandparents raise his sister, 24, and brother, 18.
In addition to support from his family, Bowen also received support from his wrestling coach and learned life lessons from playing lacrosse, a game that is more than a game to the Haudenosaunee, who invented it.
The Haudenosaunee are some of the world’s best at a game they’ve been playing for more than a thousand years. It is credited with having brought peace to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and boys are given their first lacrosse stick while they’re still sleeping in cradles.
But in playing lacrosse against teams outside the territory, Bowen was exposed to racial slurs from other players. It was hard, he said, not to let that develop into self-hate and thinking that he was not smart.
“I thought, I could either prove them right or I can prove them wrong. My family and coaches told me I could go anywhere. They taught me not to listen to that self-hate. For me, the answer was going to school.”
As a lover of sports, Bowen earned a degree in sport management at Pennsylvania Western University Clarion (formerly known as Clarion University of Pennsylvania), a couple of hours south of his home.
“It takes a lot to go off the reservation,” he said. He missed his grandparents and younger siblings. He returned home during the coronavirus pandemic to do a field placement at his former high school, Salamanca High School, where 46% of students are Indigenous or multiracial.
While there, he did more than the required work and started tutoring, coaching and mentoring students. The athletic director told him, “’I think you would be a heck of a teacher.’ I took his advice to heart.”
Bowen chose Pitt-Bradford, closer to home, to pursue his teaching credentials. As part of a class, he wrote an essay for Dr. Don Ulin, professor of English, about the importance of lacrosse in Haudenosaunee culture. Ulin asked permission to share his essay with the President’s Cabinet, which was considering adding the sport as an NCAA Division III offering at Pitt-Bradford.
Soon Bowen was meeting with Athletic Director Bret Butler. “He said lacrosse was out of his expertise, and he wanted to learn about the culture and the impact,” Bowen said. Bowen explained how the game is a healing mechanism and its deep roots and meaning for the Haudenosaunee.
Butler asked Bowen to serve as the student representative in the university’s search for lacrosse coach Scott Gwyn, who was named in July, and now Bowen is teaching Gwyn about the game’s roots as well.
“Lacrosse is a unique sport in that it is a lot of traditional beliefs from my culture,” he said. Bowen is not only playing on the Panthers’ club lacrosse team, but also helping Gwyn coach. “My teammates are very excited [about the new program]. They love hearing about how much the game means to me, and some of my classmates are very excited to watch us play.”
While Bowen is teaching, he’s also learning about navigating a complex system like the university. In January, he will be one of two Pitt-Bradford students to attend the NCAA Student Immersion Division III Program, which will assemble 40 ethnic minority students to the NCAA convention in Phoenix for training and encouragement to increase minority representation in DIII athletics.
He is learning how to get things done, and that’s something he hopes to take back to the Allegany territory with him when he graduates with his education degree.
He is anxious to give Salamanca students the confidence to pursue education. “We’re preparing the future generations,” he said. But before he leaves Pitt-Bradford behind, he’s got one thing left to do this spring on a new artificial turf field atop traditional Haudenosaunee lands – play a game of lacrosse.
“When I’m out there on that field, I can see my ancestors watching me play.”