According to TLC, 143 out of 219 languages are in danger of extinction in the United States, while 75 of 94 are at similar risk in Canada.

The RWC was developed by The Language Conservancy (TLC), an NGO dedicated to protecting around 50 Indigenous languages around the world, in order to churn out such dictionaries at super-speed. TLC, which has a $3 million budget, regularly teams up linguists with Native American language teachers to work on these dictionaries.