2025 Theme

Conference Theme Statement

Join us for the 2025 Continuums of Service Conference in Seattle, Washington, March 26-28, 2025. This event, held throughout the western U.S., focuses on honoring our connection to place. The 2025 theme is “Higher Education: Honoring our Connections to Place and Indigenous Communities.”

We respectfully acknowledge that the conference is taking place on the homelands of the Coast Salish peoples, who continue to steward these lands and waters as they have since time immemorial. Coast Salish territories historically included seasonal and permanent villages along its coastal waterways linked through interconnected webs of tribal relations and affiliations. While settler colonialism seeks to undermine and negate traditional systems of governance and networks of social organization, we recognize that Indigenous communities have worked diligently to protect and preserve their sovereignty and cultural teachings.

Higher education has roots in colonial violence and oppression. Many institutions are working towards healing relationships, honoring place, and cultivating strong partnerships with their diverse communities. Strong community engagement initiatives acknowledge and value their local Indigenous histories, while developing partnerships, policies, programming, and curriculum that elevate culturally sustaining pedagogies. They utilize strengths-based models that foster success for diverse students, and help recruit and retain more faculty, staff, and administrators who represent the diverse student population.

In this gathering, we seek to explore ways that higher education honors place and Indigenous history, builds partnerships, values diverse knowledge, and creates more welcoming environments for Indigenous and other diverse students, faculty, and staff. We intend to explore how institutions can better partner with Indigenous nations and local communities to overcome barriers and address common critical issues. We hope to explore how Indigenous traditions and ways of knowing can inform and strengthen our community engagement work. What are the dialogues and discourses we need to have at this time in history to heal and strengthen our nation and move towards greater liberation from oppression?

Please join colleagues from across the western region to explore these issues, and share strategies for improving student success, building sustainable partnerships with Indigenous and diverse communities, and creating healthy, just, and thriving futures for all.