Lutheran Studies Conference

The 2024 Lutheran Studies Conference celebrates the life, work, and commitments of PLU alumna Cecelia Svinth Carpenter, connecting PLU’s past, present, and future with the Nisqually, Puyallup, and other Coast Salish people and tribes. Daughter of a Danish Lutheran pastor and a Nisqually woman, Svinth Carpenter received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in education from Pacific Lutheran University before teaching in Tacoma Public Schools. She was a lifelong advocate for her own Nisqually people and other Salish tribes and a leader in advocating for Indigenous education, the preservation of Indigenous history, and the revitalization of Nisqually culture, spirituality, and arts. She located herself and her work in this region, the watershed of Mount Tacobet/Tahoma/Rainier — the Mother of All Mountains — and titled one of her books Where the Waters Begin: The Traditional Nisqually History of Mount Rainier.

This conference has been planned in partnership with Nisqually and Puyallup leaders and elders; faculty of PLU’s Department of Education and the Native American and Indigenous Studies program; the PLU Center for Diversity, Justice, and Sustainability; members of PLU’s Indigenous Advisory Network; members of the South West ELCA Synod Native American Work Team; and others across PLU who have worked to document our history with tribal people to better discern our future obligations to this place and its people.

2024 is a year of many celebrations and anniversaries: the 120th anniversary of the 1854 Medicine Creek Treaty, the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Native American Voting Rights Act, the 50th anniversary of the 1974 Boldt Decision, the 20th anniversary of the exoneration of Chief Leschi in 2004, and what would have been the 100th birthday of Nisqually historian and PLU alumna Cecelia Svinth Carpenter. In addition to these significant national and regional anniversaries, this year’s conference precedes and honors the National Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools on Sept 30, 2024, and Indigenous People’s Day on October 14, 2024.

As a university within the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU), PLU acknowledges statements of the ELCA such as 2021’s “A Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to American Indian and Alaska Native People.” We welcome honest and candid discussion of the ELCA’s regional and national work in the Truth and Healing Movement. The Lutheran tradition lifts up radical love while also encouraging honest acknowledgment of the ways we harm ourselves, each other, and the earth, and this conference likewise combines celebration and accountability.

Throughout the day, we will celebrate Ms. Carpenter’s legacy in Indigenous education, tribal sovereignty, and cultural revitalization through panels, presentations, guest speakers, and the sharing of food, song, and dance.

The conference is free and open to the public and is made possible by the generosity of the anonymous donors who endowed the University Chair in Lutheran Studies.