Among all the losses that colonization’s fire swept through Tuscarora lands, none cut deeper than the silencing of our language—the breath of our ancestors, the heartbeat of our identity. Our great ancestor George Lowry spoke with heavy truth in 1864, mourning not only the deaths of three of his sons, but the betrayal of a hollow promise: “In order to be great like the English, we took the white man’s language and laws, for we were told if we did that, we would prosper.” But prosperity was never ours to claim. The colonists forged a power structure that excluded us, keeping our people marginalized for centuries. Robeson County remains one of the poorest and least educated regions—not by accident, but by design. Settlers mocked our speech, cruelly saying that when we spoke our language, we sounded like the calls of hoot owls or screech owls, shaming our people into silence. Still, the Creator’s spirit is unyielding. Even when the world tried to bury our words, the language used in the songs of Randall Locklear, spoken softly between kin, in the Brooks Longhouse, alive in the hearts of our people until the dawn of the twentieth century. The Tuscarora language is not the property of any one person. It is the sacred inheritance of our people—the fire we guard, the song we pass from generation to generation. It belongs to the collective soul of Tuscarora, bound by Creator’s promise and the strength of our ancestors. We will never again surrender this voice. With every word reclaimed, we breathe life back into our spirit. Our language will live—ever ancient, ever new—forever Tuscarora.