NUMU TEKWAPUHA NOMENEEKATU NEWSLETTER April 2007 Vol. 10 Issue 2 The Comanche Language & Cultural Preservation Committee 1375 N.E. Cline Road, Elgin OK 73538-3086 www.comanchelanguage.org fax: 1-580-492-5119 e-mail: [email protected] Editor: Barbara Goodin “Letter From The President” year for 15 new families and the first-year families will serve as mentors for the new Marvaweka Nvmvnvv tvasv nv families. This project proposal will be going naznvmvnvv, isv tvasv nv hazhaits3nvv to the General Council in April! Your support at the Council meeting is very We have been blessed with a fine group of important to getting it on the ballot so that young Nvmvnvv suk5 sik1 taa the Comanche people can determine if this Nvm6habin3nvv. These young families project will continue. If you have an have done a remarkable job of learning to organization or group that would like to hear read our language. They have begun the more about this project please contact the process of learning to speak Comanche. CLCPC. We can have some of the project This is a task that requires a huge amount of family members demonstrate what they have dedication and motivation, and it is my learned through this experience. belief that they are up to the task. VRA For those of you who have not heard of the RON RED ELK “Learning to Speak Comanche” Project, ________________________ here is a brief description of it. !! NEW ADDRESS !! There were 15 families being served in this Please note that we have a new mailing Project and their task was to learn to read address, effectively immediately. We have a and write in Comanche. The objectives forwarding order in place at the post office, were: 1. The parents were to learn the but that will only be in effect for a short spelling system; 2. The parents were to learn time. After that time mail will be sent back to use the recording /play back device; 3. to the sender. Please make a notation for The parents were to play a wide variety of future use. Our e-mail address will remain Comanche language sounds around their the same, as will our web site address. Our children as often as possible; 4. Once the new mailing address is: parents’ reading skills were achieved, then 1375 N.E. Cline Road, Elgin OK 73538. they were to read to their children; and 5. ________________________ The parents started replacing English words with Comanche words on a regular basis. THE ICE STORM OF 2007 These words would be language used in The terrible ice storm of January 2007 their daily lives. The target family is one that paralyzed much of the country reared its with infants to six years old. By the way, ugly head in southwest Oklahoma, also. three infants were born during this project Fortunately we didn’t lose power, but many year. weren’t so lucky. Even though we were iced in, my computer gave me the means of The CLCPC is proposing another project communicating with others, some in the same boat, and some not. Our friend in life that are different or unique. Maybe you Hawaii, Dr. James Warson, e-mailed to ask can live in a very different manner and yet if we were okay. He recently suffered still be just as comfortable and fulfilled in damage during an earthquake in his area, so your life as anyone else. Maybe the life of he was well aware of the damage Mother the Comanche people of long ago is not so Nature is capable of inflicting. Another different than that of the people today. friend, Kerry Kennington, wrote to inquire Maybe the only real difference is the how we were, and I would like to share his language that is spoken. So learn the thoughts from that cold winter night. language of your ancestors. Speak the “Isn’t it amazing….when you think words that they spoke. Live as comfortable about how much more fortunate we are on a a life as they did. This is the way to honor cold icy night, living in houses with heating your ancestors. This is the way to continue a systems, than the Comanche were living in way of life that need not be lost. This is a teepees? Now, that seems obvious until you way to perpetuate the traditions and history consider -- what if the power goes out? of the Comanche people. Learn the The Comanche people had lived, for at language, and the Comanche people will least hundreds of years, without electrical live on to the end of time.” Well said, Kerry. power. Yet the Comanche people were While we were ice-bound I took the completely at home in freezing weather opportunity to update our web site, and in because they knew how to do it. They were reading it over, I began thinking of the just as comfortable in their wood-fire heated activities that the CLCPC has been involved kahne as anyone of us is in our gas or in over the years. I thought about the electrically heated home. In fact, because Immersion Camp we held at Fort Sill Indian they had for so long mastered the art of School in 1994. At that time we had many living in this environment, they had more of the elders with us who have since gone time to spend with their children. Not every on. hour of every day was required to eek out a One of the activities we did was a living because the process had been “naming ceremony” in which we received perfected. There was time to spend with the an Indian name if we didn’t already have young. one. Roderick “Dick” Red Elk was the elder This may explain why so many captive that I worked with, and he asked me to tell white children became loyal Comanche him some things about myself. After members. They went from a life of constant listening he gave me the name of Nanumu daily toil to a people who had a system of Weekitu – “One Who Searches For Her living in a balanced environment. This is Ancestors.” He named me that because of not to minimize the trauma that they would my work with genealogy and my search for have experienced during their abduction. my relatives. Dr. Alice Anderton spelled it But with time, and the instinct for survival, I for me and I wrote it down. I have that same suspect that they would realize that the piece of paper today. It got me wondering, average Comanche of that day was as how many other people received an Indian comfortable in their daily life as I am today. name that day? And how many still Even without the leather recliner and central remember it? If you were one of those, I’d heat. It was instead a buffalo robe and a love to hear from you. fire. Different, but just as effective. It’s very special that Roderick gave me So does this mean we should give up my Indian name. He was an elder that I these luxuries? No, of course not. But it greatly respected. All of the elders that we does give a sense that maybe there are other worked with during that era were quiet, ways to live. Maybe there are approaches to unassuming and respected by all of us who worked with them. It is sad that we can sleep it, dream it, and build future plans for never go back to that time when they were it. with us, that time is gone forever – like they ____________________________ are. But we can remember them, and we can honor them by continuing on this KIOWA DOCUMENTARY journey that we began together – to preserve The Kiowa, who are our neighbors to the and keep our language alive. I think they north, our friends, and in many cases, our would be proud of us. relatives, have one of their own docu- __________________________ menting their oral history and traditions. In a recent article in the Lawton Constitution THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE Donna Rowell was featured as a Kiowa filmmaker who is working to preserve her There are three kinds of people: tribe’s oral history before it is too late. Those that make things happen, You can learn more about this endeavor Those that watch things happen, by going to www.vanishinglink.com or And those that wonder what happened. www.emerginglinks.com. What kind are you? We wish Ms. Rowell much success in ___________________________ what must be a project of the heart. ____________________________ A SUCCESS STORY One of our tribal members in Hawaii, DORIS DUKE COLLECTION Dr. James Warson, wrote a while back and We have more interviews from the Doris said he would like to learn to say a prayer in Duke Collection from the University of Comanche. He was asked to give the Oklahoma. You can go online and see the invocation at a yearly conference he attends entire collection of Comanche interviews at: and had witnessed others do the same in http://digital.libraries.ou.edu.whc.duke/. their native language. I gave him some JOE ATTOCKNIE INTERVIEW suggestions and he studied diligently, and June 9, 1969 this is what I heard from his recently: (*Background information: Joe Attocknie “ZOOOWWWWEEEE! I did it! I just stood was born September 11, 1911, near Apache, up, opened my mouth, and out it came. It Oklahoma. He has lived in this area all of must have been good, because I had people his life.) come up to me afterward and say how I was fortunate in learning (about impressed they were! Now you can tell the Comanches) by living with and being raised ones who complain about the difficulty of by my Grandmother Quer-her-bitty, which the language, “If a 65 your old man on an means “arise to capture.” She was a island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean Comanche from the Rooteater band of with only books, CDs and DVDs is Comanche.