The paper presents observations that have been made for 16 years during documentation and revitalization projects on the language communities which are associated with endangered Native California languages. Specifically, the paper explores language variation within two native California speech communities, the Pomo and the Cawaiisu, and discusses the ideologies associated with linguistic differentiation as they are reflected in the different ways this variation / differentiation is iconized or framed; either as a marker of community coherence creating links to the past or as a marker of community division being a threat to community.