There's these little coals, and they're cherry red, and they have little white forming on the outside where the ashes.

And these are what's left of our languages, these little glowing embers.

And what I've been trying to do for 40 years is push those little coals into a pile and

then throw little shavings on there and then get that to flame and build a fire.

And that's kind of how I visualize where our languages are today.

That's how fragile they are.

And what's so gut wrenchingly sad is when something kicks that apart.

And you just go, okay, so, okay, so, you know, you could just, okay, well, roll three back together.

And try to keep it going, you know what I mean?

And what makes me do that is beyond my understanding of myself.

It's something to do with your innate identity, your innate connection to a greater sum in the universe.

Welcome to language keepers.

Emergence Magazine's six-part journey into the struggle for indigenous language survival in California.

I'm Emmanuel Vaughn Lee,

executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast-Newalk people of present-day Marin County.

Da'i-Waqa-Hwatra, he'stint-Meworthy.

La Mesa, school,

school,

in the...

...this

...theirce

...