Williams College

Search

Table of Contents

Locations

1. Stockbridge-Munsee Community Partnership

   1. The Center for Learning in Action

      Through the K-12 Racial Justice Curriculum Initiative, CLiA connects students to opportunities to work with local K-12 educators to help them better integrate Stockbridge-Munsee tribal history into their curricula. 

      
      

      The Sentinels Public Policy Fellowship Program is a competitive summer research fellowship that funds student proposals—including proposals that seek to address injustices borne by the Stockbridge-Munsee Community—via policy changes at the federal, state and local levels.
      
      

      The CLiA Community Outreach Summer Fellowships are a summer training program focused on collaborative projects that aid the Stockbridge-Munsee Historic Preservation Office in raising community awareness of their work and help the tribe preserve its history in the region.
      
      

      As a Sentinels Public Policy Fellow, Saud Afzal ‘22 worked with CLiA fellows Isabel Carmona ’24, Jacob Grover ’24, and Tiffany Park ’23 last summer to produce a video series of historic Mohican sites in Berkshire County and eastern New York State. The videos serve as a virtual alternative to the usual in-person community homelands trips that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The videos have also been used for first-year student orientation, and Afzal hope that they continue to be used as an educational resource both at the College and beyond.

      
      

      As the second part of my fellowship, Afzal wrote a paper analyzing the history and effectiveness of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a law that requires institutions receiving federal funding to repatriate ancestral remains and other items in their possession belonging to Native American tribes. Afzal collaborated with and received valuable insight from Stockbridge-Munsee Community Historic Preservation Manager Bonney Hartley and the Stockbridge-Munsee Historic Preservation Office for both of these projects.

      
      

      
      

      In the summer of 2021, as part of the CLiA Community Outreach Summer Fellowship, Aiden Pham ’24 worked with the Tribal Historic Preservation Office on a program to raise awareness of the historical and current-day presence of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band in Williamstown. In the fall, the program ran as part of Exploring the Arts, a first-year orientation that introduces students to creative opportunities at Williams and in the surrounding community. Aiden’s program incorporated creative activities that encouraged interaction with and reflection on nature, interwoven with educational components about the Tribe’s past and current activities.