Williams’ 1737 deed claimed land that was already home to the Mohicans. (Photo courtesy of Special Collections.)
The father of Williams College’s founder, Ephraim Williams Sr., played a direct role in the displacement of the Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe from the Town. Documented in a 1737 deed, Williams Sr. claimed land that was already the home to Mohicans.
In interviews with the Record, however, multiple students said that the College has been slow to enact recommendations proposed by a variety of working groups seeking to improve the College’s relations with Indigenous people.
“There isn’t a question about what the campus should be doing — it’s already outlined,” said Daisy Rosalez ’25, a leader for the Native American Indigenous Students Alliance (NISA).
In 2021, the College’s Committee on Diversity and Community published a report entitled “Recommendations for Reckoning with Our Institutional Histories.” The recommendations were meant to “to better represent and reckon with the College’s histories, and where needed, repair relationships with community members.”
One of the recommendations, “to create a committee, or committees, which directly address particular problematic histories; for instance, having a committee that reckons specifically with Indigenous displacement,” led to the creation of the Native American and Indigenous Working Group. The College also published an official land acknowledgment, per another one of the committee’s recommendations.
Later that year, Mirabai Dyson ’24, Gwyn Chilcoat ’24, Hikaru Hayakawa ’24, and Jayden Jogwe ’25 drafted a list of recommendations in their independent study that called upon the College to provide reparations to the Mohican Nation and create free housing for members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. The Native American and Indigenous Working group has since added to the students’ list of recommendations.
“Nothing has happened,” Jogwe said. “[The College] created the working group…
