Mount Holyoke College is located in Western Massachusetts on the ancestral land of the Nonotuck people. It is also important to acknowledge the neighboring Indigenous nations who continue to be connected to this land: the Nipmuc and the Wampanoag to the East, the Mohegan and Pequot to the South, the Mohican to the West, and the Abenaki to the North.

The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is committed to engaging with these communities in the spirit of learning and healing. Through active repatriation, interpretation, and collaboration, the staff of MHCAM aim to confront the history and enduring structures of colonialism, particularly those visible in museum collections.

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The Museum recently commissioned a regional map with Indigenous place names by the artist Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag). This map is a Living Land Acknowledgement on view in the Museum’s lobby, making visible the ancestral homelands surrounding Mount Holyoke College and beyond. Find out more about Elizabeth James-Perry’s work and the Decolonized Bear Map project.