The Nez Perce Tribe’s language revitalization programs work to maintain and strengthen the language that carries these names and these histories.

Language loss is not a neutral cultural process; it is the disappearance of a specific way of understanding the world, a specific set of relationships between people and places, a specific form of historical memory.

The fact that White Bird’s actual name — Peopeo Hihhih — is less commonly cited than his English name is one small example of the way historical memory often operates through the linguistic frameworks of the dominant culture rather than through the indigenous frameworks of the people whose history is being told.

Before The Army Came: What The Wallowa Valley Actually Was