Representatives from around 40 Indigenous groups -- from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and New Zealand -- gather in the college town of Bloomington, in the midwestern state of Indiana, for the International Conference on Indigenous Language Documentation, Education, and Revitalization (ICILDER). Linguists, teachers, students, researchers and Indigenous leaders spent the weekend brainstorming how exactly to rescue these vulnerable languages from the brink. Of the more than 6,000 Indigenous languages recognized globally, nearly half of them are at risk of disappearing, with about 1,500 facing immediate extinction, according to a 2021 study from UNESCO. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES