Comanche Historic Preservation Offers Summer Encampment

Comanche Nation Historic Preservation will host a student encampment in Colorado during the month of June.

Those interested in signing up will need to apply online on or before May 30.

There are currently 25 spots available, according to Director Martina Minthorn.

“This is going to be a youth encampment here, collectively with different programs with Comanche Nation,” she said. “We've been working with the U.S. Forest Service to host a Comanche encampment at Spanish Peaks in Southern Colorado. So, I work with a lot of different federal agencies, and so now we're taking an opportunity to actually utilize our partnership and take advantage and go back to some of our traditional territory in Colorado.”

Minthorn said they will leave on June 21 and return on June 24.

“It's students that might be leaving eighth grade going into high school, or graduating seniors, and so it'll be high school students,” she said. “There will be 50 applicants, and so they can apply on the website, social media to be able to apply for the registration for the encampment.”

Minthorn said she hopes the encampment will educate the youth.

“Along the route that we will be going will be a lot of our sacred sites,” she said. “And so, we'll be stopping off to give them a good view of where we've had. On a hobby, boys went and did vision quests. A lot of them are teenagers, so they'll be seeing places where they would have been doing their own vision quest, and hopefully we can be able to spark some interest in our young people to want to know more about our history, our culture, and hopefully try to preserve. And so, we really want to make the drive a classroom on wheels. So, we're going to be really focusing on language. We want to focus on history, plants, anything in our environment. So, we're thankful to have all the partnerships come together.”

Minthorn said she’s thankful for the Forest Service for their help as well.