The College sits on the ancestral homelands of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. In his original will, the College’s founder, Ephraim Williams Jr., allocated money for the education of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Today, 229 years after the founding of the College, no members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community have attended the College, and there exists no Native American and Indigenous studies department. We must take concrete steps towards rectifying the brutal history between the College and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.

In June 2022, I began interning at the StockbridgeMunsee Community’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) on Spring Street. For those who are unfamiliar with it, this office opened fall 2020 in partnership with the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (OIDEI). For the past few months, I have had the opportunity to design a new Mohican history exhibit for the Williamstown Historical Museum, create a booklet about Mohican history in Williamstown, and work on the repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural artifacts. These projects, along with the opportunity to visit the Tribe’s reservation and meet many Tribal members, have added a layer of depth and perspective to my studies that I would never have gained from my classes alone.

My projects are just several in a long list recently undertaken by College and community members in hopes of highlighting the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. During a short walk on and around campus, one will see a huge “Mohican homelands” banner above Paresky Center, another outside of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, and 50 Mohican homelands lawn signs encircling the roundabout. This signage is only a small fraction of the work being done. Students and faculty in the Native American and Indigenous Working Group meet monthly to discuss ongoing campus projects. Just last week, several students presented at Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicanituck, a conference put on by Bard College to honor and learn about those whose homelands the school is on. One of the most beautiful things I have witnessed since I began interning at THPO is just how many members of the College community are ready, willing, and excited to learn about the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.

I ask that the College’s administration match the community’s energy and take advantage of this momentum in two ways. First, by investing in the creation of a Native American and Indigenous studies department. As it can take many years to create a new academic department, the College should, as a preliminary step, offer more classes on Native American and Indigenous history. Second, as no members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community have attended the College, and there are few Native American and Indigenous students currently enrolled, the College should work to do more admissions outreach to Native American and Indigenous high school students. This could come in the form of reaching out to Stockbridge-Munsee Community high school students to answer questions about the College and provide help with the application process, as well as creating a program similar to Windows on Williams specifically for Native American and Indigenous students.

I implore all members of the College community who are not aware of the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and of the College’s role in the Tribe’s forced removal to actively seek out this history. As we live, learn, and work on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican people, it is critical that we remain cognizant of the fact that we are only here because the Tribe was forcibly removed.

We must reckon with the fact that Ephraim Williams Jr. played a key role in the Tribe’s forced removal and that his harmful legacy remains deeply embedded in our school. Failure to tell the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community does a disservice not only to the Tribe, but also to all of the College’s students. The past five months of engaging with Mohican history have allowed me — for the first time in my career at the College — to feel connected to the land on which I am learning. Let us become a school that makes knowing the history of whose lands we occupy an integral part of our identity. We will all be better off for it.

Mirabai Dyson ’24 is an environmental studies major from Los Angeles, Calif.