Youth Participate in KCA Field Day

According to Yolonda Ramos, executive director of KCA Intertribal Land Use, KCA Field Day took place at Fort Sill Indian School on Saturday, May 17, and featured several activities.

“We are trying to revitalize the lands out here at the Fort Sill Indian School,” she said. “It's been dormant for so long, and so I really feel like some revitalization is necessary. I listen to the feedback from all of our KCA citizens, and the feedback that I've gotten is, ‘Do something with this land that we have here.’ And so, I have been working towards doing a lot of different things out here, including our educational agriculture program, and we wanted to do some recreation out here.”

Ramos said they built a walking and running trail in the woods, which was utilized for the color run.

To start the day, she held a color run for Week of the Young Child, as the Treasurer for the Comanche Academy Charter School PTA.

“We had to postpone that a lot because of the flooding that happened, and so…we had postponed to May 3, and then of course we had to postpone again today,” Ramos said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, let's just bring everything together into one day.’”

After the color run, there were several events throughout the day.

“We're going to feed buffalo burgers and hot dogs for lunch, and then we are going to have other activities throughout the day, like the 50-yard dash, 100-yard dash, softball throw,” she said. “We have sack races, three-legged races, tug of war, some different activities like that, and then we also have a buffalo hide, and so we're going to teach them how to tan buffalo hide. So, we've got some cultural activities as well. As you see, we have our volleyball net up, and we also have our garden, and so some of the kids are going to start planting some more seeds for us today, too.”

Participants also camped at the Fort Sill Indian School.

“I think that a few different conversations with people, and they were just like, ‘Wouldn't it be cool if we camped out here?’ Although some people are a little skittish and a little scared, some people are just like, ‘Yeah, let's do it, let's camp.’ And so, we've already got some people that have their tent up already,” Ramos said.

She said it was nice to bring people together.

“I love to bring people together, that's kind of what I do, and so bringing our tribes together, you know, KCA, it just makes sense,” Ramos said. “With the Earth Day, of course, we brought our tribes together to clean up the land, and then today we're just bringing our tribes together to celebrate the land and our families so that they can actually have a chance to enjoy the jointly owned land.”

She said it took the whole KCA team to put on the field day.