Oxford museum makes ‘historic’ return of Naga human remains

An Oxford University museum returned the remains of 39 Naga people taken during Britain's colonial rule in India to community members on Monday. Almost 30 members of the Naga community, based in northeastern Nagaland near Myanmar, attended the ceremony. The handover at the Pitt Rivers Museum was described as a "historic moment" by the museum's director, Laura Van Broekhoven.

The Pitt Rivers Museum, founded in the 19th century, is home to the largest collection of Naga culture artifacts in the world, with over 6,000 objects. It has already returned human remains to Indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand, and the US. The Oxford museum, which only removed human remains from display in 2020, still has around 2,700 remains in storage.

The handover took place as part of a broader trend among Western museums reassessing their acquisition of cultural exhibits, particularly human remains. The Naga remains were collected between 1910 and 1940 by two colonial administrators who were anthropologists. Most were confiscated during punitive military expeditions, not given freely.

The Naga people once practiced headhunting, but also kept the heads of their own chiefs at the center of their villages. One of the returned remains is a chief's head. Anthropologist Dolly Kikon, a member of Nagaland's Lotha-Naga community, noted that the manner in which these human remains were taken away from their land is a matter of much speculation and regret.