This conference developed as a result of an ELDP project (2005-2007) which Prof. Meng-Chien Yang and I are undertaking to document Yami, an endangered Austronesian Language. This documentation effort brought us together with Prof. Margaret Florey, a 2003 ELDP grantee documenting four moribund Moluccan languages, and Prof. Oliver Lin, a political-ecologist who has been engaged in critical analysis of socio-political policy of indigenous peoples in Taiwan, to collaborate on several academic activities, one of which was to organize an international conference.