Since the movie Black Panther debuted in movie theatres across the United States, the frenzy has been enormous with the fixation being on Wauconda, a small village just about an hour outside of Chicago, Illinois. In the same breath as Wakandans residents, the actual Waucondans have had it with questions about vibranium.
The after effect of the movie sweeping the box office has left people living in Wauconda attending to calls and e-mails from people inquiring about Wakanda and whether the city was keen on adding any changes about its location to complement the movie.
Wauconda’s mayor in a media chat gave her two cents on the issue, detailing the nature of calls her office has received with people screaming the catchphrase “Wakanda forever!” or asking if the town of less than 20,000 is hiding Wakanda’s valuable metal called Vibranium
“At first I was like, is there a full moon out? Someone called and asked how we pronounced the village name and when I told him, he began yelling “Wakanda forever! “Which I am guessing is from the film. ” said the bewildered Mayor.
An interesting tidbit is that the name Wauconda name means “god” in the language of the Kaw and Osage Nations. In Osage, the word is typically written as “Wah.Kon.Tah” though it’s phonetically identical to Wakanda.
When asked recently whether Marvel’s borrowing “Wakanda” for the name of its fictional African country was not politically incorrect, Kilan Jacobs a native of the Osage tribe and language student had this to say
“It was a sacred home place to them. Beyond that, I have no way of knowing if in some real African language this is an actual place name or word they have as well. But overall I felt no disrespect or misdoing. The movie was great and uplifting.”
