I must start off by saying that I am not Indigenous and living in the U.S. I experience privilege from being white. I am from Ferndale, Washington, and grew up on unceded land that has been the Lummi Nation’s since time immemorial.
I had long prioritized social justice in my life, from advocacy for local education initiatives to leading young voter sign ups to promoting resources for women’s reproductive health — long before Lutheran higher Ed took me into its (loving) grasp. That being said, growing up the granddaughter of a Lutheran pastor, I’m sure the tenets of Lutheranism played a role from the start.
When I took a class called “Indigenous Rights and Practices” during my junior year at California Lutheran University, I anticipated interest in the subject but did not predict the profound impact it would have on me. The class allowed me to have conversations that changed my world view and shifted how I perceived my obligation towards the land I grew up on. I gained knowledge about the political landscape surrounding tribes in the U.S. in a way I had not previously experienced. Most importantly, I took away an identity as a “treaty partner.”
My work in the class focused on the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855. The Treaty of Point Elliott was signed by numerous Coast Salish tribes, as well as the future first governor of the Washington territory, Isaac Stevens. The Treaty made many promises — guaranteeing healthcare, opportunities for education, and the maintenance of tribes’ traditional fishing rights. However, not unlike every other treaty the U.S. has signed with a tribe, this treaty has been broken time and time again. Let me repeat that so it sticks with you — every treaty a tribe has signed with the U.S. has been broken. 368 broken promises.
As a part of the project, I interviewed a former Chairman of the Lummi Nation, and we had a conversation about the inextricable nature of the Treaty: salmon, land, orcas, and people. During the conversation about the Treaty, the Chairman emphasized repeatedly that I am a treaty partner. He said too often treaties are thought of as just “Indigenous things” and “relics of the past.” He underscored the constitutional obligation to understand treaties as the supreme law of the land. The Chairman urged me to understand that the Treaty of Point Elliott is just as much my treaty, as it is his.
The U.S. Government has broken their promises, and many of us have looked the other direction while they have done so.
The U.S. government, largely comprised of white, protestant, heterosexual, wealthy men, have incessantly put the full onus on tribes to uphold and fight for what was promised in jointly signed treaties. A treaty at its core is a promise; it is a partnership. Promises require commitment to be upheld from all sides, and when a party is not a good-faith partner, treaties do not function, and one of the partners loses recognition in the process. The U.S. Government has broken their promises, and many of us have looked the other direction while they have done so. They have stolen land, killed animals, kidnapped children, and purposefully eradicated the languages and cultures that have sustained Indigenous people since time immemorial in immeasurable ways, an unquantifiable number of times.
As a country, our conversations with Indigenous nations, our government-to-government partners, have long been riddled with white people speaking over Indigenous voices and failing to honor formal treaties. These conversations have come with a disregard for differing opinions, and ears shut to cries that demand access to land, clean water, and healthcare. We have a duty to uphold our treaties — that in and of itself is public interest and civic engagement. When we do not do so, we disregard our government partners, our neighbors, and our friends.
My understanding of myself as a treaty partner has led to me sharing this perspective. While I fully accredit the language and knowledge of being a treaty partner to the Chairman, I have California Lutheran to thank for giving me the steppingstone to uncover this identity that should have been there all along.
I have pursued opportunities to delve further into the idea of being a treaty partner, focusing my undergraduate philosophy capstone on Indigenous sovereignty and U.S. treaty breaches, by comparing arguments made by John Locke and Vine Deloria Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux theologian, author, and Indigenous activist. I have used my position as a U.S. Senate staffer to advocate on behalf of tribes. I am now applying to law school to continue to grow in this treaty partner identity in a new way.
I challenge you to identify and understand the treaties that affect the land of your home. I aim to stir a curiosity in you to learn about the promises that impact places and living things dear to you.
I am a treaty partner because my ancestors signed the Treaty of Point Elliott and I have benefited immeasurably from it. The treaty is full of flaws and problematic promises, items that scream colonization and assumptions of misplaced authority and superiority. But it also reserves rights and guarantees vaccines and education. I have a responsibility to uphold the treaty and respect it as the supreme law of the land. I challenge you to identify and understand the treaties that affect the land of your home. I aim to stir a curiosity in you to learn about the promises that impact places and living things dear to you.
I know I have failed and will continue to fail in upholding my treaty. However, a much more significant failure would be declining to acknowledge, share, and fight for the promises stated in the Treaty of Point Elliott altogether. Sharing the verbiage of being a treaty partner, is a step I am taking as I walk on, practicing ownership and responsibility.
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Editorial
From the Publisher & Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes, Lamont Anthony Wells
6 min audio
Wells and Windham-Hughes frame vocation as “ground game” — the practical, public living-out of faith through civic engagement — and introduce the issue’s focus on how Lutheran higher education equips students to repair the world.
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Article
Civic Engagement and Faith Perspectives
William O'Brochta
15 min audio
Guest editor William O’Brochta introduces the section by overviewing the ELCA’s call to civic engagement, recapping the Fall 2025 Civic Engagement and Faith Perspectives conference at Texas Lutheran University, and previewing the participant essays that follow.
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Article
Leaning-In to the Civic Lessons of Our Namesakes
A. Lanethea Mathews-Schultz
6 min audio
Mathews-Schultz uses the civic legacy of the Muhlenberg family — from General Pete’s Revolutionary call to action to President Muhlenberg’s inaugural address on the “education of conscience” — to invite students at Muhlenberg College into a shared civic inheritance.
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Article
Teaching and Mentoring in Service of Civic Engagement
Haco Hoang
6 min audio
Hoang describes how her teaching, mentoring, and research at California Lutheran University — including a multi-year collaboration with the Lutheran Office of Public Policy on Lutheran Lobby Day — cultivate civic skills grounded in ELCA social statements and the Lutheran tradition of faith and reason.
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Article
Community-Based Research as Engaged Citizenship
James Paul Old
6 min audio
Old argues that genuine citizenship requires more than charitable gestures — it demands long-term, reciprocal community partnerships — and describes how Valparaiso’s Community Research and Service Center embodies that vision even amid the financial pressures threatening such programs.
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Article
An Ecosystem of Democracy
David Thomason
6 min audio
Thomason argues that faith-based institutions should equip students not to dominate the public sphere with their convictions but to cultivate an “ecosystem of democracy” — pursuing universal values with virtue and tolerance while acknowledging humanity’s incomplete grasp of truth.
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Article
Bringing Core Values to Life through Civic Engagement
Austin Trantham
5 min audio
Trantham shows how Saint Leo University’s Benedictine Core Values shape his civic engagement work — from advising a “Why Vote?” campaign and Constitution Day panels to engaging students in the Unify Challenge for respectful cross-institutional discourse.
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Article
Civic Engagement, "Baylor In Deeds," and Engaged Learning
Rebecca Flavin
6 min audio
Flavin describes how Baylor’s strategic plan “Baylor in Deeds” and its Office of Engaged Learning are building civic engagement into the Arts & Sciences core curriculum, with early Global Engagement Survey data showing gains in civic efficacy and global civic responsibility.
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Article
Fragmented in Faith: The Concerns and Hopes Found in Student Spirituality and Civic Engagement
Emma Bohmann, Monica Sitachitta
11 min audio
Two Texas Lutheran University students reflect on the cyclical pattern of low spiritual and civic engagement on their campus and argue that distinguishing Lutheran values from Lutheran practice could open space for civic engagement to become a non-optional expression of neighbor-justice for all students.
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Article
Perspectives on Institutional Service: All Hands on Deck
Ruth Henricks
No. 12 · Summer 2001
Henricks, President and CEO of Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, uses Annie Dillard’s image of Christians tourist-like on Deck C to call colleges and social ministry organizations to “all hands on deck” in a church standing at a threshold of shifting demographics—a growing rich-poor gap, a coming Hispanic majority, an aging baby-boom, dual-career families, contingency workers, and for-profit Lockheed Martin-style competitors entering human services. Drawing on Foster McCurley, Andrew Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive, Justo Gonzales’s Manana, Arthur Becker, Bob Bacher, David Tiede, and the ELCA constitution, she argues that SMOs and colleges are the “hands” of the body of Christ and asks whether we have courage to require Spanish, partner ecumenically, cut services to Caucasian clients, and lead the church from the front rather than the rear.
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Article
Calling Economists
Lynn Hunnicutt
No. 37 · Spring 2013
Reading Luther’s Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved alongside Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, Hunnicutt asks whether economists, too, can be saved—and whether economics can host a serious conversation about vocation. She traces her own move from Utah State to Pacific Lutheran University and its Wild Hope Center for Vocation, and turns to Deirdre McCloskey and George DeMartino as economists whose work makes room for vocation and the common good within the discipline.
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Article
Living at the Intersection of Fear and Hope
Mark S. Hanson
No. 32 · Spring 2010
Hanson draws on his January 2009 ELCA/ELCIC visit to Jordan, Israel, and Palestine—a Hebron Quran that did not burn, fifth graders dancing at the Hope School, a conversation with King Abdullah II—to frame the vocation of Lutheran higher education at the intersection of fear and hope. Engaging Brueggemann, Sittler, Buechner, Auden, Strandjord, Douglas John Hall, W. Robert Connor, Lewis Mudge, and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, he argues that Lutheran colleges are called to critical inquiry that does not collapse into a hermeneutic of suspicion, to a “thinking faith” that resists religious fundamentalism, and to communities of discernment that work for the common good.
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Article
Beyond Deep Gladness: Coming to Terms with Vocations We Don’t Choose
Deanna Thompson
No. 58 · Fall 2023
Thompson, living with incurable cancer, expands Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation to make room for deep sadness — drawing on Arthur Frank, Shelly Rambo, Beverly Wallace, and Ross Gay to argue that practices of lament, including the public lament of Friday Flowers at St. Olaf, open space for gladness, joy, and even flourishing to emerge.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Colleen Windham-Hughes
No. 61 · Spring 2025
5 min audio
Windham-Hughes uses Fred Rogers’ neighborhood as a living embodiment of a Lutheran understanding of vocation — seeing dignity in each person, offering one’s gifts generously, and trusting that the well-being of the neighborhood is intrinsically connected to the well-being of every neighbor.
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Article
From Alien to Citizen
Arne Selbyg
No. 29 · Spring 2009
Selbyg reflects on three experiences of being educated for citizenship—growing up in Norway under the legacy of Lutheran pastors and public school teachers who resisted the Nazi occupation, arriving in America as a resident alien, and becoming a naturalized American citizen—and proposes the jazz ensemble as a better metaphor for American society than the melting pot, one in which different citizens learn skills, study other instruments, and dialog with one another in service to the common music.