How well-being needs language: A view from Indigenous minority groups

Language is the key to interaction between humans. Language enables people to live together in a community, and to cooperate in daily tasks, keeping life going. Language helps to transmit and reflect history. And to pass traditions and knowledge across generations, and between communities, as the vehicle for aesthetic expression, for legends, stories, ceremonies, and songs. One’s language is a mark of identity, a symbol of belonging to a group and to a country, and of intrinsic connection with the land.