Language has power. In every culture the language the people developed described their world in ways that were recognizable to them, but do not always necessarily translate. Different things matter to different people, and how we choose to describe the world is how we tell all those who come after us what mattered — and what we were about.

For the Wampanoag people whose language, after 400 years of contact with the European settlers, had ceased to be spoken, exciting work is underway to revive the language, both written and spoken.

This precious work was described to attentive high school classes last week by Wenonah Madison, wife, mother, tribal member, business owner and emergent linguist.

Reflecting on why the Wôpanâak language was lost, she pointed out that it survived for a long time but that confidence in speaking it or sharing cultural pride disappeared. “My grandparents’ generation did not know [the native language] any more and they did not speak it, and because they wanted us to fit in and do well and not attract attention to ourselves. They stopped speaking of the ceremonies and then stopped even performing them,” Ms. Madison told the high schoolers. She also noted that native people had to learn English quickly in order to understand a culture that was vastly different in its values.

“You have to know how to read legal documents and when we go back through the records we see how many Wampanoag people did learn the ways of the settlers and did leave wills written in the same style and did buy and sell property in the manner they were learning from their new neighbors,” she said.

Responding to questions from students and teachers, Ms. Madsion said becoming invisible was a way to protect children from negative attention, and that the message for tribal children was not to draw attention to their Indian identity. “It was work hard, keep quiet about who you are and then maybe you can get a good job,” she said.

But after obtaining a private school education and a degree from an Ivy League college, Ms. Madison said she felt the pull of her tribal identity and her ancestral home in Aquinnah when she married and had children. So despite her family’s misgivings, she came home to Aquinnah. She and her young family have since enrolled in the Wôpanâak language reclamation project that won founder Jessie Little Doe Baird a MacArthur Genius Grant last year.

Though she laughingly told the students that she functions in the Wampanoag language “like a second grader,” her pride in the project and admiration for Jessie Little Doe for initiating the work is evident. Noting that the work is lengthy and that it will take time for adults to learn a whole new language system with 13 letters in its alphabet, Ms. Madison said she sees the work as another vital step in restoring identity and pride to the tribe. “It’s so incredibly meaningful for tribal members to be able to speak to each other in their own language, and for the older people who thought this would never happen to see Jessie and Jason’s daughter speak fluently in the Wampanoag language,” she told the students. “We have a child who is a native speaker now and that is like an omen for the future.”

Many of the students listening to the presentation are themselves bilingual or even trilingual and some profound connections were made. The comment that language reflects the values of the people who speak it resonated with Joao Carlos Netto, who said: “At home we speak only Portuguese because that is the language of our families but then we come to school and we are not allowed to speak Portuguese, only English. Sometimes I am asked to translate a word from Portuguese to English, but there is no translation. It’s not just one word in Portuguese being replaced by one in English, it’s a whole way of thinking.”

There was agreement around the room that to be bilingual is much more than being able to speak two languages fluently; it is essentially being able to function with empathy and understanding in two completely different cultures. “You need both,” observed Livia Sampaio. “You have to speak English properly when you need it and that’s schools and jobs, but in your own life you speak the language that you dream in.”

Predictions have been made that by 2025, 60 languages will have been lost all around the world. There are places in the world where only 10 people speak a language and they are the elders. Enormous numbers of people speak Mandarin, Spanish and English — the three most widely spoken languages in the world — and yet how much has been lost in our understanding of each other when a language simply disappears. It’s an enormous achievement for the tribe to spend years reconstructing a language that was no longer remembered, but will now be spoken. The tribal children will be able to speak a language that their ancestors would recognize. The language reclamation program is replacing a broken link in the chain of community.

Elaine Cawley Weintraub is chairman of the history department at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.