Language Hosts Open House

On Friday, April 19, the Comanche Nation Language Department held an open house in Lawton, Oklahoma, for tribal and community members to tour the facilities and meet the staff.

Language Department Director Randi Lynn Attocknie-Clayborn said they wanted to host the community.

“Our main goal with this open house is to create and be consistent with a welcoming environment to our community and our people for our Comanche language learners, to our Comanche language educators and people who generally just want to research and know more about who we are as people,” she said. “You know, language is a cornerstone of culture, and that's what we're here for. Everybody here, all of our staff, are dedicated to this mission, and it's an exciting venture for all of us.”

The department provides morning immersion classes led by language consultants and LATCs.

“We all kind of take turns and kind of seeing what it is that we want to focus on. During the summertime, we're going to be really focused on our curriculum-building platforms that we're building for our community, for not just school age level,” Attocknie-Clayborn said. “We're talking from the very beginnings of life to the very ends of our lives as we are trying to be all-encompassing when it comes to language. Because we are in every part of our community when it comes to these things. You know, from the very beginning to the very end, we want to be able to speak and know and do the things that we need to in our language.”

She said there were several projects they wanted to launch for tribal people.

“Many of them we've been working on slowly to try to make sure that what we're giving is accurate and that it is thoroughly planned out,” Attocknie-Clayborn said. “So, some of the things that we were trying to make sure that we have for our people to know, we want them to see our online classes. We would like them to also notice our new playlist updates and our new website updates as well.”

These projects include talkcomanche.org.

“We try to keep us up to date even with like our social media platforms, and so those are all linked to that as well, so you will be able to have accessible information, up-to-date information,” she said. “And we still have our comanchenation.com address as well, which has the same links in there, so everything is linked back to that if needed. So, we have our language and material requests, our translation requests, all of that still is in place. We just want to make sure that we have that for our community in case they have any other questions.”

For those interested, there’s also a YouTube channel.

“With the Comanche Language YouTube channel, you have access to playlists. One specifically that we would like to highlight would be our Comanche hymns,” Attocknie-Clayborn said. “So, we have over well over 100 Comanche hymns, and on this particular playlist, it has the translations as well as the songs on there. So, this is kind of making it more accessible so you don't have to wait for a hymnal and you don't have to wait for recordings to come to you. You can just get online and have those.”

The online learning service can be found on the website as well. 

She said the tribal people are an important aspect of the department.

“Language doesn't work without our community's involvement, and so this is our way of opening our house, our open house to them so they can see what we're up to as well as see where their involvement is as a community member,” Attocknie-Clayborn said.

More information can be found at comanchenation.com or by calling the Language Department at 580-599-5315.