Cheney describes the role of language in Native American philosophy in the following way:
A. Language is descriptive -- it is a set of "signifiers" that attach themselves, often in changing ways, to a set of "signified" objects.
B. Language is important, but it plays little or no role in invoking a "ceremonial world," which is the necessary context through which Native American wisdom traditions are conveyed.
C. Language is performative -- it's not what words signify or represent so much as what they do.
D. We are "prisoners" of language in the sense that our reality is limited to what language is able to convey.