The LSA is pleased to announce that members of Indigenous communities, including linguists and language activists, will be granted a fee waiver for its 2019 and 2020 Annual Meetings, in recognition of the International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019, as declared by UNESCO. Those who qualify for the waiver will meet UNESCO’s definition of an Indigenous person.*

UNESCO Definition of Indigenous

All definitions of the concept of Indigenous regard self-identification as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the term indigenous should be applied. Within the UN family, the ILO (ILO Convention 169) defines Indigenous and Tribal people as follows:

Tribal people in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations. People in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.

Please be advised that the registration forms for these meetings will have a check box for qualifying registrants to affirm that they meet the UNESCO definition. All such requests will be made on an honor system. Only those who have lived as a member of an Indigenous group as defined by UNESCO will qualify under this category.