"Without a language, you do not have cultural autonomy, you do not have intellectual sovereignty, you do not have culture, you do not have heritage."

Many indigenous languages are disappearing as there are no longer any young people left to speak those languages, so their remaining speakers are dying out. In North America, since 1600 at least 52 Native American languages have disappeared.

Globally, there may be more than 7,000 languages that exist in the world today, though many of them have not been recorded because they belong to tribes in rural areas of the world or are not easily accessible. It is estimated that 6,809 "living" languages exist in the world today, but 90% of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people. Some languages are very close to disappearing.

"Forty six languages are known to have just one native speaker while 357 languages have fewer than 50 speakers. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than more common ones."

"It concerns us that we are rapidly losing it and because language is a large part of our identity, that if we lose our language we lose a big part of ourselves, we basically don't know who we are and we can't express who we are," a native American said.

Languages also convey unique cultures. Cherokee, for example, has no word for goodbye, only “I will see you again”.


The American Indian comedic group, 1491s released this video to have Native people from from Indian country record themselves saying “I love you” in their Native language.

The result is the “Indigenous Love Words Project”