The Importance of Language for a Nation

or as long as I can remember, when I told anyone in my personal life about my Indian heritage there would arise, consecutively, three questions. “What tribe are you?”, “Peoria? What’s that?”, and “How do you say XYZ in your language?”. One two three. Just like that. Obviously there is always room for variation in how the questions are asked, what order they come in, etc. etc. but for the most part those questions are what came up when I’ve told someone (who is uninvolved in Indian affairs) that I’m a Peoria Indian. And I believe this to be a shared experience because when I’ve recounted this to other Peoria citizens, they reply with a laugh and a nod. They know exactly what I mean. Rest assured, this is not a complaint in any way. I’m just noticing a pattern that I find interesting. If I really wanted to I could spend all day writing about every single question, dissecting each one in with extreme scrutiny — but I am only interested in discussing one of these questions today. The third question. The one involving language. <a href="https://medium.com/@kiilhswa/the-importance-of-language-for-a-nation-13b9513fe82b">Read More</a>