Nott’s work began in 1993, when she read an article about the committee’s adoption of an alphabet developed by Alice Anderton, a linguist-anthropologist from the University of Oklahoma who recently left the school to become executive director of the Norman, Okla.-based Intertribal Wordpath Society, a not-for-profit group dedicated to the preservation of all Oklahoma Indian languages. “Randi is one of our major contributors, financially and in terms of ideas.
“We’re very appreciative,” said committee president Ron Red Elk of Anadarko, Okla., who describes Nott as Taanumu Kasaraibo (our Comanche angel). Not bad for a white girl, say Comanche leaders. Working with the tribe’s Lawton, Okla.-based Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, Nott, who lives in Naperville, has produced flash cards, a picture dictionary, children’s reading books and a video. “Now, fewer than 100 people are fluent in the language, and most of them are elderly.” Louis to California and were known as great horsemen. “It’s a race against time as the elders are dying,” Randi Nott says of her volunteer efforts to preserve the language of the Comanche, a once-powerful tribe of Native Americans who dominated the West from the present location of St.
