When Joe Bendickson was growing up, first on the Lake Traverse Reservation near the Minnesota-South Dakota border and then in St. Paul, he did not speak Dakota, his ancestral tongue. Few did.

After moving abroad, I found my English slowly eroding. It turns out our first languages aren’t as embedded as we think. Credit...Artwork by PABLO DELCÁN Supported by By Madeleine Schwartz Madeleine ...