In their provocative article, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa have captured how dominant notions of competence reinforce normative whiteness as universal and fail to account for processes of racialization in language learning. Building upon their goal of “shifting the locus of enunciation in ways that provide a glimpse into alternative worlds beyond colonial logics,” in this commmentary, we illustrate one such alternative in which language and languaging are anchored in Indigenous notions of relationality, the worldview that everything is interrelated, and by extension, interdependent. This view aligns with the deep connection that Indigenous communities make to their languages and the specific geographical, sociopolitical, and cultural contexts of their use. Relational frameworks thus counter the dispossession experienced by many Indigenous communities due to the colonial practice of separating languages from these contexts (see Davis, 2017, pp. 40–42). Similarly, by facilitating knowledge coproduction in ways that are locally specific and accountable, a relational approach serves to undo practices of teaching and assessing language learning in ways that uncritically adopt Eurocentric (“universal”) norms (McIvor, 2020; Mellow, 2000). We enter this discussion as scholar–practitioners based at a public university in the lands of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Serrano, and Luiseño peoples. Melissa Venegas is a white settler, PhD student, and former K–12 Spanish instructor. Her current research involves critical approaches to language education that examine language hierarchies and validate US varieties of Spanish. Wesley Y. Leonard is a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and a linguist who serves as a Native American Studies faculty member. His experiences being told that his community's efforts to learn their “extinct” language from documentation would not succeed inspired his current work in language reclamation, a mode of language recovery that replaces colonial logics with Indigenous community needs, goals, and worldviews. Clearly, in its narrow conceptualization, linguistic competence is theoretically lacking. Its assumptions about language ignore the social contexts that are fundamental to language learning and use, and its focus on an ideal speaker–hearer as the unit of analysis misaligns with how languaging actually occurs. In contrast, an analytic that considers language users and learners as networks of relations points to different metrics and units of analysis––language ecologies rather than languages-as-objects and diverse communities rather than an abstract prototype. Below, we explore examples of how language learning can be framed through an approach anchored in relationality and the ensuing notion of relational accountability, the responsibility of being accountable to relationships such as those between people and nonhuman relations, institutions, and lands. While this principle applies for all language communities, we draw special attention to those that have experienced severe ruptures to core relationships due to colonial dispossession and cultural genocide. In these contexts, exercising relational accountability entails active interventions to restore the relationships that have been disrupted or severed. The initial goal may not be “proficiency,” but rather to strengthen cultural ties or relationships with Elders (Lukaniec & Palakurthy, 2022, p. 344). As Flores and Rosa have pointed out, narrow definitions of language, as well as dominant notions of linguistic competence, render racialized students as “deficient” in academic language because of their supposed reliance on home or community language patterns. In addition to erasing the legitimacy of current language users’ practices, we further note how these dominant frameworks have replicated colonial logics that inhibit language reclamation potential. For instance, Miami people at one point had shifted fully to English, thus becoming “incompetent” in relation to myaamiaataweenki (speaking Miami) with relationships anchored in language similarly damaged. Decolonial framings of “competence,” however, might instead reference a community's collective ability to use their language(s), including future use as a result of reclamation (Leonard, 2008). Relational accountability entails building capacity to realize this potential through appropriate interventions in language teaching, development, and assessment. This is exemplified in ANA ‘ŌLELO, a Hawaiian proficiency scale developed by and for Hawaiians to reflect community values and ways of being (Kahakalau, 2017). The tool was designed to not only measure linguistic proficiency but also to perpetuate the Native Hawaiian culture. For example, the scale considers the ability to perform protocol, an important aspect of Native Hawaiian culture. Moreover, as Flores and Rosa have described, normative notions of competence elevate some people to a fully human status while diminishing the humanity of racialized Others. We observe that this conceptualization also advances colonial violence by erasing the nonhuman relatives that have central roles in many Indigenous cultures. However, appropriate interventions can counteract these erasures. For example, Engman and Hermes (2021) described an ecological approach to language learning that recognizes land as a relative. Young Ojibwe learners participated in forest walks near what is now Hayward, Wisconsin, and the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation. The participants engaged in collective meaning-making involving discussions of naming items, with the land as an interlocutor. Requests for names of items in Ojibwe went beyond lexical labeling, instead serving as invitations to consider broader relationships, for example, How did it get here? Who put it in this configuration? What is our relationship to the object? As another example, Corntassel and Hardbarger (2019) described land-based pedagogies with Cherokee youth and Elders in the territory of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Participants took photographs of items meaningful to them that could exemplify Cherokee community sustainability and perpetuation of Cherokee lifeways (p. 96), which they then presented at a community symposium. Such an approach exemplifies relational accountability to the land, community, and intergenerational knowledge, and acknowledges learners’ experiences and expertise as vital to community well-being. As Opaskwayak Cree scholar Shawn Wilson concluded in his foundational Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, knowledge production and sharing become accountable to Indigenous ways of being and knowing through a relational framework because “relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality” (Wilson, 2008, p. 7). The activities described above demonstrate language learning as a process anchored in relationality. People are learning language, but rather than this being a decontextualized goal assessed through normative notions of linguistic competence, it represents an outcome of cultivating relationships that allow communities to thrive.