"If I Were Chairman"

On Friday, June 23, two staff members of the Comanche Summer Youth Program received four tickets to Castaway Cove along with meal tickets from Comanche Nation Chairman Mark Woommavovah and 20 dollars from the First Lady after submitting their essays on “If I Were Chairman.”

Coordinator for Comanche Youth Program Dekayla Pewo was one of the staffers who won. She mostly wrote about leadership philosophy.

“If there is no vision, there is no hope,” she said. “Which, if we don't have a future, if we can't picture a future, then there is no future.”

Pewo said she pictures stable and cultured growth in the future. This includes the younger generation.

“Where we have more education for our younger children, where they can learn because, in my opinion, the kids are the future for our tribe,” she said. “We have more health care. We take more examples from the elders, get more of their opinions, and because I think the elders' opinions matter a lot.”

She said it was tough because she had to pull several components for her essay.

“What I thought about mostly was my grandma,” Pewo said. “She was a member of the Comanche Nation, and I remember her always telling me, the elders and the kids, they're the people who we need to look after, and we need to focus more on small businesses, maybe fund those small businesses, and of the Comanche Nation small businesses, and have their support, because that can lead into, you never know.”

This was Pewo’s first year working under Randi Lynn Attocknie-Clayborn.

“It's been really fun to work with kids of different ages, and just helping them teach, play different games, helping them learn about their culture, and all different kinds of stuff,” she said.

Youth Coordinator for the summer program, Michael Miller, wrote about empowering the youth through camps.

“The youth is our future, and the youth is pretty much everything, besides the elders who also teach the kids,” he said.

Miller said he wanted to incorporate everything learned through games that contained culture and head staff.

“From Miss Randi, Miss Dina, from the youth program, to help with the kids and stuff,” he said.

Miller said it was a great experience to interact with the youth. 

“Really teaching them about our culture and interacting with them, playing, painting, just playing games or having small talk while eating,” he said.
 

According to Miller, these connections are essential to help educate the young ones, including games and real-life lessons.

“It can be like normal things like to save your money, so you don't go broke, and stuff like that,” he said.

Miller also said he started out not knowing some of the Comanche language and said he’s been learning just as much as the kids.