The Indigenous language on this wine label was almost lost

Joanne Campbell was on a quest to revive Coast Miwok, the lost language of her tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Though there were ...

May 25, 2023
2:48 PM

Joanne Campbell was on a quest to revive Coast Miwok, the lost language of her tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Though there were around 1,500 speakers of Coast Miwok in pre-contact times, by the twentieth century there were none: The last fluent speakers had died in the late 1970s. But thanks to the work of Campbell and other tribal peers, linguists in recent years were able to reconstruct a Coast Miwok dictionary and begin teaching the language. By the time Campbell died last year, there were about a dozen fluent speakers of Coast Miwok, according to her son, Rob Campbell.

Esther Mobley