Numunu Family Tree

In starting this adventure of documenting creating an interactive element to a massive family tree project, I am hoping to start strong and find some useful Facebook resources I can turn to when in need.

            I thought that Facebook would be a good starting point since it is a platform that is still widely used by those of a certain generation that have a great deal of tribal and familial knowledge I am in need of.

I had a few criteria that I really wanted to be met for the pages that I spent time with.

• Needed to have an array of recent postings
• The pages needed to have a reasonable amount of different people commenting on posts
• Needed to have posts that were familial in nature
• I wanted to avoid pages that were political in nature

For my first set of observations on social media and where I can go to find out more about Comanche lineage, I have spent time hunting through the Comanche Museum Facebook page. There are several different Facebook groups and pages, but most of those seem to be more political in nature rather than educational or generally informative.

            Through my adventures on the museum page, I found a few pictures that I can start thinking about. When the older historic pictures come up, the museum tries to provide a brief description of the person or a story about the time period; it’s all very interesting. What I think is most useful or helpful is the public interaction with the posts. There are several places where tribal citizens jump on the posts and give their own memories or stories they have heard regarding the person or story.

            Up until COVID put a stop to a lot of different social activities, the museum sponsored the reunion for the Fort. Sill Indian School reunion. One of the things that I find incredibly important about this is that the museum still has copies of several if not all of the yearbooks for the school. This can be a wonderful place to start finding family pictures that can be added to the baseline family tree. There have also been several spoken videos that the museum made for different events, so those are also a way to add an interactive element to my research.

            Even though the museum spends several posts promoting their gift shop, there seems to be a good mix of visual art, photographs, and ads containing hours of operation to make it a useful resource. In some of the more recent posts, visitors can see beaded eagle fans, leggings, and several family pictures.

            In conjunction with the museum page, I also spent time observing the Comanche World Community page. This is more of an interactive group with a lot of active posting happening every day on a range of topics. Even though the information passed around in this group is of a more contemporary nature, it’s good getting to know the people who are responsive to the posts.

            Overall, I think the two different types of Facebook pages will be useful, the museum provides some of the base information that I am looking for, while the community page can allow for living members of the family to comment and see the work being done. Pages like this one, allow communities to interact with projects that are directly recognizing and honoring several different families.