During a repatriation ceremony at Chapel House in November, Colgate returned more than 1,500 funerary objects to the Oneida Indian Nation. The collection is composed of items once buried with ancestral remains, including ceramic pots and figurines. It represents one of the largest single repatriations in New York State history.
Many of the sacred belongings came into the University’s possession through a collection acquired in 1959 from the family of an amateur archaeologist. Housed in the Longyear Museum of Anthropology, “it should never have been acquired,” said President Brian W. Casey.
The event marks the fifth repatriation undertaken in partnership with the Oneida Indian Nation since 1995, and “it will not be the University’s last,” Casey added. “The work to do what is right continues.”