This paper explores the language ideologies and socio-political realities linked with the very localized oral traditions of northwestern California, covering both stories and songs, affiliated in greatly indexical ways to languages' distinctiveness. This traditional concern with local difference is renewed in the context of tribal language programs where speakers also try to keep their languages, stories, songs, and worldviews separate from the adjacent tribes and the English-speaking world. Like in the past, the distinctive languages still play a significant role in identity preservation, separating the communities in publicly stressed ways and inbreathing language learners with a feeling of pride in the distinctiveness of their own traditions.