Gwyn Chilcoat ’24, Mirabai Dyson ’24, and Hikaru Hayakawa ’24 held the first organizational meeting for the movement to institute Indigenous studies at the College on Nov. 30. Although not in attendance, Jayden Jogwe ’24.5 is spearheading the movement alongside his peers.
Several members of the Native American Indigenous Students Alliance (NISA) attended the meeting, including Daisy Rosalez ’25, who provided background on NISA’s work and its goal to advance the establishment of Indigenous studies at the College. She spoke about NISA’s connection with the Ivy Native Council and receiving guidance from Dartmouth College, which has a department of Native American and Indigenous studies.
Chilcoat, Dyson, and Hayakawa began the meeting by discussing the Stockbridge-Munsee Community’s history and foregrounding the College’s partnership with the Nation. Dyson and Hayakawa, along with Jogwe, have pursued research or internships with the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) on Spring Street and reflected on their collaboration with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.
The three students also touched on their archeological work over the summer of 2021. Students and community members volunteered to unearth evidence of the 1739 Stockbridge Meetinghouse and the 1783 Ox Roast Site, two culturally significant historical sites for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Led by the THPO, this excavation was a seminal contribution to the community’s work to repatriate tribal artifacts to the Stockbridge Munsee-Mohican Community.
They continued their presentation with an overview of Chilcoat, Hayakawa, and Jogwe’s fall 2021 independent study, during which they took field trips to tribal heritage sites, engaged in historical and documentative research, and collaborated with the Town community and the THPO.
Following the presentation, Chilcoat, Dyson, and Hayakawa split the approximately 30 attendees into four “task force” groups. Each task force will be responsible for one assignment: sending letters to department chairs to call for the hiring of Indigenous scholars and Indigenous studies researchers, researching Indigenous studies programs at other institutions, exploring other institutions’ tribal-college partnerships, and producing a plan to publicize the need for Indigenous studies.
A check-in meeting will be held during the third week of Winter Study, and the deadline for all groups will be the end of Winter Study.
“I know that many of the students who came to the meeting have been involved in other areas of activism here on campus,” Dyson wrote in an email to the Record. “It was really nice to hear from them and to start to see where we might be able to work together and learn from one another.”
In an interview with the Record after the meeting, Hayakawa shared his concerns about the challenges he anticipates facing while continuing to advocate for the Indigenous studies program at the College. “The ways in which new academic programs are created are very decentralized,” he said. “What we’re really working to do is to create the str structure of a program so that when it comes to it, we can just say, ‘Look, this program already basically exists. Why don’t you just create it?’”
However, after observing the turnout at last week’s meeting, Dyson, Hayakawa, and Chilcoat all said that they are confident that the College community will continue to advocate for Indigenous studies.
“The strong attendance and engagement sent a clear message: Students want an Indigenous studies program at Williams, we are here to organize for it, and the College is failing us,” Chilcoat wrote in an email to the Record
