Longyear Museum of Anthropology

The Longyear Museum of Anthropology is Colgate's on-campus anthropology museum.

Land Acknowledgment

The Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University recognizes our collective responsibility to acknowledge our colonial history. Our campus sits on the traditional lands of the Onyota’a:ká: known as the People of the Upright Stone and Oneida Indian Nation of New York. The museum is actively committed to building relationships with the Oneida people and with other Native American tribes and nations. It is urgent that we consider the legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together today.

Mission Statement

The Longyear Museum of Anthropology is a teaching museum at Colgate University. We promote anthropological learning through experiences with material culture, including teaching, research, and storytelling. By creating opportunities to share perspectives with one another, our aim is to foster mutual understanding among peoples with diverse backgrounds and worldviews. We recognize our responsibility to the living communities affiliated with the art and belongings we house. By using our platforms for advocacy, we strive to bring attention to the inequities many such communities may continue to face.

Vision Statements

Globally and locally, we seek to build collaborative relationships with groups whose cultural materials are held in the Museum, especially the Onyota’a:ká (Oneida), upon whose land Colgate University sits, and the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) Confederacy.
We commit to continuing work on decolonizing our museum practices. Our work is rooted in contemporary anthropology museum ethics of care that emerge from deep considerations for multiple communities’ rights and responsibilities in relation to their belongings and knowledge about them.
We seek to facilitate access to collections—in digital and physical realms—that honors learning experiences, while also respecting necessary restrictions to culturally sensitive materials.
We endeavor to provide different engagements with material culture--in some cases hands-on, and with an emphasis on sensory experiences that go beyond the sight-dominant, if appropriate.

The Longyear Museum of Anthropology educates the Colgate community about the artistic and cultural heritage and continuing work of indigenous peoples of the past and to showcase the work of contemporary artists who explore historical or contemporary issues of social significance in their work.

The collections of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology are an important resource for exhibitions and teaching, and for research by students and faculty.

The Anthropology Museum at Colgate began in the early 1950s as a teaching collection. In 1957, John Longyear, an archaeologist and anthropology professor, purchased a few cases to display fossil casts and local archaeological specimens.

Land Acknowledgment

Mission Statement

Vision Statements

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