Nurturing a faint call in the blood: a linguist encounters languages of ancient America.

This is a recounting, in my midfifties, of an indigenous journey: from growing up in Los Angeles a son of fundamentalist Arkansas hillbillies to becoming a trusted voice for the still misunderstood languages and world views of native North America and an organizer of yearly dialogues among Indians, quantum physicists, and linguists.

That I knew nothing of my small Cherokee and Osage background when I began the journey will act, I hope, as a clarion call to all of Native America's "lost children." All of us with even a drop of Indian blood who were raised monolingual Eng