Steen Family Symposium and Earth & Diversity Week
April 17-23, 2023
We are grateful for the Steen Family’s generous contribution to fund this annual symposium, which brings informed speakers who challenge current thinking and propose healthy change to the PLU campus for the purpose of contributing to educate for “lives of thoughtful inquiry, service, leadership and care — for other people, for their communities and for the Earth.” The symposium shares PLU’s and the Environmental Studies Program’s commitment to thinking about environmental issues from intersectional perspectives that bring into focus the connection between the health of the environment and the health of the communities and people who inhabit these.
The 2023 theme of the Symposium and Earth and Diversity Week, Sowing Resilience in Fractured Land, invites us to examine the wide-ranging and long term impact that the violence of natural resource extraction has on ecosystems, communities, and individuals. Following the Symposium’s commitment to proposing healthy change, this year’s speakers share alternative ways of living and coexisting on fractured lands and watersheds. Their work models how creativity, tradition, ingenuity, and laborious community-based work can provide a path toward resilience at the local, regional, and social scale.
All of the Symposium events are free and open to the public.
MONDAY, APRIL 17: Steen Family Symposium for Environmental Issues
Decarbonizing the Northwest Economy: Clean Energy Transition Institute (CETI)
6:00pm, Anderson University Center (AUC), Rm 113
Speakers: Eileen V. Quigley and a staff member from the Clean Energy Transition Institute
Eileen V. Quigley is Founder and Executive Director of the Clean Energy Transition Institute, which works to accelerate an equitable clean energy transition in the Northwest. Eileen spent seven years at Climate Solutions identifying the transition pathways off fossil fuel to a low-carbon future in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. She built and led the New Energy Cities program, which partnered with 22 Northwest cities and counties to reduce carbon emissions. In this presentation, Ms. Quigley will present the Clean Energy Transition Institute’s findings from their ground-breaking research regarding rural and tribal community decarbonization.
TUESDAY, APRIL 18: Steen Family Symposium for Environmental Issues
Earth Day Story Fest
9:00am-5:00pm, AUC 213
The Tacoma Public Library’s Community Archives Center and the Environmental Studies Program at PLU are excited to invite the campus and Parkland communities to the first Earth Day Story Fest.
To celebrate Earth and Diversity week we are coming together to share and record stories about the Clover Creek Watershed and about our individual experiences of climate change in the Pacific Northwest.
Parkland and PLU’s campus are located on the traditional lands of the Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin Island and Steilacoom peoples. The Clover Creek Watershed has nourished these lands since time immemorial, but these waters are dwindling and the communities and living beings they sustain are hurting. Following PLU’s mission of care for the Earth, all are welcome to the Earth Day Story Fest to reflect on the watershed we knew and know, on our relationship to the place where we live, study, and work, and to the planet we share.
Join us at PLU’s Anderson University Center from 9-5:
Record your story to share with the community. Stories will become part of the Community Archives Center and PLU’s Mortvedt Library’s Special Collection.
DJS LOUNGE READING GROUP: Boys and Oil
Tuesday, 8:45am, 2:00pm, 4:00pm, DJS Lounge
Join a group of students, staff, and faculty to discuss chapters from our Earth Day speaker’s book, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay on Fractured Land. Prof. Brorby will be making a short appearance at the Wednesday reading group.
For a copy of the reading, please contact Nicole Juliano (juliannh@plu.edu) or Adela Ramos (ramosam@plu.edu)
Pop-Up Clover Creek Watershed Exhibit
AUC Gray Area and Mortvedt Library
Walk through our pop-exhibit in the Anderson University Center’s Gray Area and the Mortvedt Library Lobby to learn about the history of our local watershed.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19: Steen Family Symposium for Environmental Issues
DJS LOUNGE READING GROUP: Boys and Oil
Wednesday, 12:30pm, AUC, DJS Lounge
Join a group of students, staff, and faculty to discuss chapters from our Earth Day speaker’s book, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay on Fractured Land. Prof. Brorby will be making a short appearance at the Wednesday reading group.
For a copy of the reading, please contact Nicole Juliano (juliannh@plu.edu) or Adela Ramos (ramosam@plu.edu)
Steen Family Symposium Inaugural Panel on Environmental Issues
Sowing Resilience in Fractured Forests and Watersheds
2:00pm, AUC, Rm 203
The inaugural panel brings together three local leaders who are working on finding ways to counteract the impact of extractive economies on the Pacific Northwest’s lands, watersheds, and ecosystems.
Panelists:
Eirik Steinhoff, Center for Responsible Forestry and Legacy Forest Project (co-founder)
Eirik Steinhoff has worked at The Evergreen State College since 2013, where he teaches and co-teaches interdisciplinary programs and courses with titles like “How to do things with words,” “Imperialisms,” “Forensics,” “Literary Arts Toolkit,” “Words/Woods,” and “Gateways for Incarcerated Youth.” In 2021, he co-founded the Legacy Forest Project and joined the Board of Directors for the Center for Responsible Forestry (Board Member); both organizations are dedicated to abolishing clearcut logging of structurally complex, carbon-dense, naturally regenerated forests on public land in Washington state. Most of his teaching and research in recent years revolves around the question, “What needs to be the case for things to be otherwise?”
David Troutt, Natural Resources for the Nisqually Tribe
David Troutt holds a BS from the University of Washington School of Fisheries and has served as the natural resources director for the Nisqually Indian Tribe since 1987. As Natural Resources Director, his work focuses on salmon, shellfish, wildlife, and caring for the Nisqually’s traditional territories. He worked closely with the late Billy Frank Jr., helping to realize his vision of restoring the Nisqually watershed.
Lowell Wyse, Executive Director, Tacoma Tree Foundation
Lowell Wyse is a scholar of modern American literature and the environment with special interests in place, travel, urban forestry, and environmental justice. Currently, he is the executive director of the Tacoma Tree Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Loyola University Chicago and a master’s in English from Wichita State University, and is the author of Ecospatiality: A Place-Based Approach to American Literature (U Iowa P, 2021). The Tacoma Tree Foundation is an organization dedicated to educating, empowering, and supporting community members in neighborhood-based greening. The Foundation seeks to grow urban tree canopy in the Greater Tacoma area through neighborhood-based planting projects and tree giveaways, as well as educational activities that highlight the many social and environmental benefits of trees.
Earth Day Lecture, Taylor Brorby
Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
7:00pm, AUC, Scandinavian Cultural Center
Taylor Brorby is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land (2022), Crude: Poems, Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience (2017), and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America (2016). The Earth Day lecture draws on his most recent work, a protest memoir where Brorby bridges daydreams and nightmares: the gentle stirrings of the prairie and the violence of the oil and gas industry. Through the lens of his experience as a gay man growing up on fractured land, he explores how character and identity are shaped by the landscapes that raise us.
Clothing Swap
10am - 6pm, Center for DJS, AUC 150
Part of the college experience is trying new things. For many college students this involves changing our look, or style, or presentation. However, this can have negative impacts – it’s not accessible to everyone, for one thing. This two-day event invites students to try out different experiences while considering the relationship between the clothes we wear and the extraction of resources such as cotton, wool, and other raw materials, as well as water, an already scarce resource. Why are we doing a clothing swap? Simply put, we don’t need to make new clothes. Instead reusing and repurposing clothing which already exists means that we don’t participate in the unregulated disposal of clothing that impacts the environment.
THURSDAY, APRIL 20: Earth and Diversity Week
Clothing Swap
noon - 8:00pm, Center for DJS, AUC 150
Part of the college experience is trying new things. For many college students this involves changing our look, or style, or presentation. However, this can have negative impacts – it’s not accessible to everyone, for one thing. This two-day event invites students to try out different experiences while considering the relationship between the clothes we wear and the extraction of resources such as cotton, wool, and other raw materials, as well as water, an already scarce resource. Why are we doing a clothing swap? Simply put, we don’t need to make new clothes. Instead reusing and repurposing clothing which already exists means that we don’t participate in the unregulated disposal of clothing that impacts the environment.
Gritty Ornithology: Birds of Industrial Tacoma
5:30pm, Meet at Red Square. Sites include: Port of Tacoma, Dickman Mill Park, and Dune Peninsula Park.
This is an opportunity to examine how bird populations living in Tacoma have adapted to and shown resilience in the face of the industrialization of the Port of Tacoma and the Tacoma Waterfront. We will discuss local industrial history and explore how nonhuman animals are impacted by and adapt to patterns of industrialization and development, particularly within the context of extractive economies in Tacoma, such as oil, lumber, and metals.
SUNDAY, APRIL 23: Earth and Diversity Week
Garden Party: Planting Beans
Noon - 1:30pm, PLU GARDEN
In recognition of Earth & Diversity Week we will be planting beans! In extractive economies, the resulting deforestation, erosion, and contamination of soil and water from mining, fracking, and overproduction of crops contribute to food insecurity. Any form of self-reliance for food becomes resistance to extractive economies. In the PLU Community Garden, where all produce is donated to the Parkland community, we aim to teach the PLU and Parkland community how to grow food through standard gardening skills. The activity we picked of planting beans will go over these basic gardening skills–including the formation/building of a gardening structure for climbing plants like pole beans.
In being connected to Earth and Diversity week, this garden work party will have a discussion and reflection on how we can be self-reliant and alternatives to extractive economies that we can participate in (regenerative economy, clean energy).
Growing your own food creates self-reliance. We will learn and practice basic gardening skills such as preparing beds, building trellises, and planting seeds.
Steen Family Symposium, Earth & Diversity Week Events
PAST EARTH DAY SPEAKERS
2022 Earth Day Speaker
Beyond Climate Doom:
Navigating Grief and Anxiety in the Age of Crisis
As our climate crisis deepens, feelings of anxiety, grief, and hopelessness are on the rise. Staying engaged in climate solutions over the long term requires us to avoid emotional burnout; yet when bombarded with so much bad news – mass extinction, dying oceans, displaced communities and burning forests – this is easier said than done. This talk explores the mental health dimensions of climate disruption among students, scientists, activists, and frontline communities, and shares practical strategies for building the emotional resilience to channel despair into meaningful action.
Dr. Jennifer Atkinson is an Associate Professor of environmental humanities at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her seminars on Eco-Grief & Climate Anxiety have been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, the Seattle Times, Grist, the Washington Post, KUOW and many other outlets. She leads public seminars on climate and mental health in partnership with youth activists, psychologists, climate scientists and policy makers. Her podcast “Facing It” also gives people tools to channel eco-anxiety into action.
2021 Earth Day Speaker
Seattle’s Beacon Hill is a BIPOC immigrant and refugee majority community with aircraft, road, air, and noise pollution. Maria Batayola will speak about El Centro De La Raza’s and Beacon Hill Council’s organizing journey for their beloved community, the multicultural/lingual challenges, the tensions between Environmental Justice and science, the multi-layered laws, and the immediacy of climate change.
Maria Batayola is a writer and long time community equity and inclusion activist. A 1.5 Filipino immigrant, she led diversity, inclusion and equity programs for Metro and King County government for thirty years. She co-founded the anti-domestic violence/human trafficking Asian Pacific Islander Women & Safety Center, the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, the Theatrical Ensemble of Asians and Kultura Arts. She currently serves as Environmental Justice Coordinator for El Centro De La Raza and chairs the Seattle Beacon Hill Council. She owns Jump Start, an organizational and community development consulting service.
2020 Earth Day Speaker
Sen. Saldaña grew up in the Delridge neighborhood of Seattle and has lived and worked primarily in Seattle and Oregon. She has expertise in a variety of areas including worker and immigrant advocacy, transit equity, women’s rights, social and racial justice, civic engagement, affordable housing and sustainable community development. Sen. Saldaña most recently served as the Executive Director for Puget Sound Sage – a nonprofit that promotes affordable and equitable housing and transportation policies, environmental justice and workers’ rights.
In that role, she helped secure $16 million in city funding for Equitable Development Initiatives in the 37th Legislative District, a future Graham Street Light Rail Station and transportation equity wins, including a low-income transit fare program. She is vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and also sits on the Labor & Commerce Committee and the State Government, Tribal Relations & Elections Committee. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theology and Humanities from Seattle University, and lives in Rainier Beach/Skyway with her husband and two youngest children.
Although Sen. Saldaña couldn’t join us on campus, take a look at this video to learn more about who she is and the work she’s committed to.
2019 Earth Day Speaker
Matthew Vitz is Associate Professor of Latin American history at the University of California, San Diego where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Latin American and Mexican history as well as environmental history. He previously taught at Dartmouth College and was a postdoctoral fellow at Mexico’s National University (UNAM). His research on the urban and environmental history of Mexico has appeared in numerous journals. His book, A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City, was published by Duke University Press in 2018. His talk was titled: “What Environmental History Can Teach Us: Lessons for Building a Just and Sustainable Future.”
2018 Earth Day Speaker
Roger Fernandes is a Native American artist, storyteller, and educator whose work focuses on the Puget Salish tribal cultures of the western Washington region. He is an enrolled member of the Lower Elwha S’Klallam Tribe and has a degree in Native American Studies from The Evergreen State College and a Master’s Degree in Whole Systems Design from Antioch University.
He works in the fields of arts, education, and social work. All of these systems are essentially communications-focused and he weaves together elements of all three to create a unique perspective relative to teaching and learning.
2017 Earth Day Speaker
Amanda McCarty (PLU Biology ’04) is an environmental scientist and policy maker with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Her talk is entitled “Connecting Science and Policy: One Lute’s Journey from Biologist to Climate Negotiator.”
During her tenure at NOAA, Amanda has contributed to efforts to coordinate and advance the development and delivery of climate services, advanced President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, and provided leadership to international climate adaptation programs. The highlight was representing the United States for 7 years as a negotiator to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which allowed her to contribute to the historic Paris Agreement to address global climate change. Amanda is currently serving as both the Assistant Director for Partnerships and the Acting Deputy Director for NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program, which produces and delivers science that serves America’s coastal communities, economies, and ecosystems.
More Earth Day Speakers
2016 – Associate Professor and the Academic Director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, Alexandria (Alex) Wilson delivered her lecture “Indigenous Sovereignty: Bodies, Water, Land, Sky, and Scholarship.”
2015 – Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky, Carolyn Finney delivered her lecture “This Patch of Soil: Race, Nature, and Stories of Future Belonging.”
2014 – Former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire spoke on her record of environmental stewardship.
2013 – Dr. Michael E. Smith, Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University
“When Small Was Beautiful: The Ancient History of Resilient Practices”
2012 – Dr. Michael Pavel, Professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Education Studies at the University of Oregon
“Connecting to Everything on Earth: Its Land, Water, and Peoples (Plant, Animal, and Human”
2011 – Greg Nickels, Former Mayor of Seattle and U.S. Public Delegate to the United Nations
“All Politics is Local: Even Global Warming”
2010 – Dr. David Montgomery, Professor of Earth & Space Sciences at the University of Washington
“Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations”
2009 – Dr. Coll Thrush, Professor of History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver
“The Environmental History of Not-Seeing: Indigenous Landscapes and the Re-Imagining of Cascadia”
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