Marie Wilcox, who saved her tribe’s language, dies

VISALIA, Calif. (AP) — Marie Wilcox, a Native American woman in California who saved her tribe’s dying language, has died. She was 87. Wilcox was once the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni but she worked for more than 20 years to produce a dictionary of the language spoken by her tribe in California’s San Joaquin Valley and taught her family. Now there are at least three fluent speakers of the language, including her daughter. Wilcox died Sept. 25 in a Visalia hospital after her aorta ruptured. Her daughter told the Fresno Bee that Wilcox’s great hope was that the language work she started would not end. Wilcox had taught regularly at a career center, and those classes are expected to continue.