In 2013, the University of Arizona hosted an innovative workshop. Unlike many academic workshops, this was not a forum for academics to pontificate on their latest theory. Instead, it was a collaboration between academics and members of the Itelmen community of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The workshop was a direct result of actions by members of the Itelmen community, who were seeking ways to preserve their critically endangered language and related cultural information. This is the story of how that workshop came to be and of what happened after the workshop. It is our hope that this story will provide a model for future collaborations between academics and Indigenous communities.