Oxford University museum returns Naga ancestral remains to India

The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University returned the remains of 39 people to members of the Naga community from Nagaland, a mountainous state in northeastern India.

Nearly 30 people from the Naga community traveled to Britain to participate in the handover ceremony. The museum and the Naga tribal leaders signed a formal agreement to return the remains, which were originally taken during the period of British colonial rule in India.

The museum director, Laura Van Broekhoven, stated that the process took six years of cooperation to overcome administrative hurdles. The remains, which primarily consist of skulls, were collected between 1910 and 1940. The museum noted that many items from that era were confiscated during military expeditions rather than being given freely. While the museum holds the largest collection of Naga cultural objects in the world, it only began removing all human remains from public display in 2020.

Naga tribal leaders, including Thejao Vihienuo, planned to bury the remains together under a joint memorial in a park to provide them with a respectful rest. The museum still holds approximately 2,700 remains in storage. This return follows a broader trend of Western museums reassessing and returning human remains to Indigenous communities in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.