Last Friday, Sept. 22, Maggie Bennett, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee community, presented a “storymap” of an out-of-print book, Christian Religion among the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. Written by her grandmother, Thelma Putnam, the book shares the history of the Mohican people’s travels from the beautiful Northeast as we know it to be today to what she calls a “swamp” in Wisconsin. She recalled that unlike most of us who can visit our homelands, even long after leaving, the Native Americans don’t have the same opportunity to “return home.” Their lands have been taken, occupied, bought, sold, and butchered into pieces through treaties with the U.S. government for the material gain of those in power who continue to benefit from their land, including the land we find ourselves on at Williams College.
When I asked Maggie what we as faculty, staff, students, and community members of the College can do to offer reparations and restorations to the Stockbridge-Munsee and greater Mohican communities, she responded that we need to begin by forming relationships. She said that you know someone well if you know when they are joking and when they are not. That kind of intimacy in relationships requires investments beyond material wealth. It requires giving our most treasured possession — time — to simply be with them. It requires richness of the soul.
Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said (as quoted in Sahih Muslim), “True richness is not to have many possessions, but true richness is having a richness of your soul.”
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I recall reading a Facebook post during Ramadan by Imam Khalid Latif, university chaplain for New York University and executive director of the Islamic Center at NYU. He wrote, “To be one who values people over profits requires a willingness to recognize what really is going on and make a commitment to live bigger than it.”
As someone who is relatively new to the College and has never before found herself surrounded by so much wealth, I continuously wonder who and what system I am directly or indirectly benefiting when I mindlessly consume. When I put together a campus program, I ponder whether its effects will ripple into the greater Williamstown community or improve the economic and social conditions of our neighborhoods. Most often, the answer may not be yes.
However, sometimes, like in the case of inviting a guest speaker like Maggie, we have the opportunity to help disadvantaged communities by allowing a changemaker to share their story with us in the hopes that it will inspire us to think bigger than ourselves. These changemakers are often intellectually and professionally gifted, but instead of gathering material wealth for themselves, they find meaning by embracing their “God-given talents and skills and to attain purpose by going out and sharing those talents and skills with others unconditionally and simply out of love, and it being the right thing to do,” in the words of Imam Khalid.
This week, the Center of Learning in Action, the religion department, the Zilkha Center, and the Chaplains’ Office, along with multiple student organizations such as the Muslim Student Union, are hosting a changemaker of a disadvantaged community in East Cleveland, Ohio. His name is Ismail Samad. He is a chef, food systems expert, community activist, social entrepreneur, and the executive director of Loiter, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to reconsidering and reimagining a different future for East Cleveland as “a direct challenge to the city’s criminalized narrative,” according to its website.
After Ismail’s main event on Tuesday, students will have the opportunity to have a direct discussion with him at two events on Sept. 27 and 28. During these events, Ismail will share his successes and challenges in building community-owned enterprises that result in spatial, environmental, and economic justice, elaborate on why Muslims and other minorities should build their own communal institutions, and demonstrate how that vision reflects Islam’s call to social responsibility and stewardship of the earth.
As all of you reflect on your next step in life, whether it is to carve out your path as a first-year at the College or craft attainable goals towards graduate school or your dream job after graduation, we hope you can continue to lean into everyday heroes like Maggie and Ismail. These wonderful human beings may be doing seemingly “small” things, but they truly exemplify the richness of the soul through their commitment to live bigger than themselves. I hope each one of you can find purpose and meaning to be a contributor to this society, and not just a consumer.
Sidra Mahmood is the College’s Muslim Chaplain.
