Forty years ago, after Karen Buller gave birth to her daughter, the head nurse at the Santa Fe Indian Hospital stopped by Buller’s room when her shift ended.
“She came in to see me and see my baby,” recalled Buller, who is now the board chair at the Santa Fe Indigenous Center. “And she said, ‘I just wanted to make sure another Comanche came into the world OK.’ ”
That nurse was Geneva Woomavoyah Navarro (Comanche), a woman who would later teach songs in the Comanche language to Buller’s daughter — an early interaction in a post-retirement career dedicated to preserving the language and passing it on. Over the years, Navarro touched museums, schools and even the U.S. Senate with her activism.
She died Dec. 10 at 99, less than a month shy of her 100th birthday.
When Buller called her daughter to relay the news, she suggested they honor Navarro by singing a song.
“This is sort of silly, but we sang ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ in Comanche together over the phone,” Buller said. “And that made us feel better about our loss of her.”
Nursing career
Navarro was born in Apache, Okla., on Jan. 4, 1926. She was raised by grandparents who did not speak English — making Navarro’s first language Numunu, or Comanche, and meaning she served as the pair’s English interpreter.
Navarro studied nursing at Haskell Institute — now called Haskell Indian Nations University — in Kansas, then attended St. Anthony’s Nursing School in Oklahoma. There, according to an article by one of Navarro’s daughters, Navarro faced racism.
“Her non-Native roommate was scared of her because she was a Comanche and would not room with Geneva because she was afraid of getting attacked by a ‘wild Indian,’ ” the article reads.
Navarro became a registered nurse, working with the Hopi and Navajo tribes in Keams Canyon, Ariz., once she got out of school. Her four-decade nursing career later took her to California, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico.
After she retired in 1986, Navarro began volunteering as a docent at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. It was then she took note of the dwindling number of people who were fluent in the Comanche language — and the fact that most of them were elders whose knowledge being was lost at a quicker rate than new speakers were being born, according to the Sam Nobel Museum outside of Oklahoma City, which houses recordings of some of her classes.
“It was not until the late 1980s and early ’90s that I realized we were losing our language,” Navarro told The New Mexican in 2000. “I just thought it would be here forever, but now it’s going away. After people my age have gone, I don’t know what will happen.”
Language preservation
The Comanche Nation Language Department estimates fewer than 50 fluent Comanche speakers remain, though in the 1800s, the tongue was the predominant trade language spoken by thousands in the Plains region. The Comanche Nation’s main headquarters is near Lawton, Okla.; its approximately 17,000 enrolled members live all across the United States.
Navarro’s language work began in Santa Fe with a collaboration with the Indigenous Language Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting Indigenous language preservation nationwide. She simultaneously made a point of teaching the Comanche language to her grandchildren — Autumn and Matthew Gomez — and their cousins.
“She was invested in teaching the language, not only to her grandkids, but realizing that the issue of language loss was happening all over the United States,” said Autumn Gomez (Taos/Comanche). “And she had an understanding that so much of our culture and our relationship with the land is tied into our language and our customs.”
Matthew Gomez (Taos/Comanche) started learning Comanche with Navarro’s guidance at age 8, The New Mexican reported in 2002, when Gomez, then 11, presented at the annual Native Youth Language Fair and Powwow. Navarro helped establish this fair and a similar one in Norman, Okla., which is still an annual affair.
Looking back, Matthew Gomez said attending Navarro’s Comanche classes — which she taught in Santa Fe and Albuquerque — brought a tone of respect to his childhood that he still carries today. Even then, he said, he knew she was giving him the knowledge of something special.
“Being in those classes was like being in school and seeing the same respect that my peers would give a teacher,” Matthew Gomez said. “Her peers — all the adults that were there — would give her the same amount of respect.”
Memories about roadtrips with Navarro stand out to both grandchildren.
They visited Oklahoma and other points of interest, often alongside Comanche Nation elders. They never turned the radio on, instead opting to talk for hours about Comanche traditions and family history.
“She was such a good community person,” Autumn Gomez said. “She was one of those people who, no matter where she went in town, she would know someone or she would have friends.”
As the siblings grew up, Navarro moved back to Oklahoma, settling into an adjunct instructor position at the Comanche Nation Tribal College. In 2003, Navarro testified in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs about amendments to the Native American Languages Act to support Native American language survival schools.
As the siblings grew up, Navarro moved back to Oklahoma, settling into an adjunct instructor position at the Comanche Nation Tribal College. In 2003, Navarro testified in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs about amendments to the Native American Languages Act to support Native American language survival schools.
Navarro supported a further amendment that would have exempted teachers of Native American languages in public schools from a requirement to obtain certification from outside of their tribes, noting no Comanche speakers at the time had college degrees.
She ended her testimony with three sentences in Comanche that translated to, “A long time ago we all spoke Comanche. Now we will all speak Comanche again. From now on, we will speak Comanche forever.”
Later, Navarro moved back to New Mexico. And even toward the end of her life — when she could not speak as much — she attended Comanche classes on Zoom, cracking jokes and teaching correct pronunciation, Buller said.
Navarro’s hobbies and interests always ended up involving the community or making it stronger, Autumn Gomez said.
“She was guided by traditional value,” Matthew Gomez added. “She inspired the people she loved, and she was a healer at heart.”