Museum agrees to return remains to ancestral homeland
Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum will return more than three dozen sets of human remains to the Naga people.
Museum agrees to return remains to ancestral homeland
A Naga delegation visited the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford last year
More than three dozen sets of human remains taken during British colonial rule in India and Myanmar are due to be returned to their ancestral homeland by a museum.
Skulls and bones belonging to the Naga people of northeastern India and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, have been on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford for more than 100 years.
In 2020, the museum took all human remains off public display as part of what it described as a "decolonisation process", including the ancestral Naga remains.
The museum has now said that the University of Oxford Council has formally decided to return the 39 ancestral human remains to their homeland.
"They've been here in a foreign land for more than a century," Dr Vihuto Asumi, President of the Sumî Hoho Naga tribe, said of the remains.
"We believe that their spirits are still not at rest - so by doing this, we believe it will bring spiritual healing, not only to the ancestral remains here but to everyone who died during the head-hunting days."
The museum is home to thousands of Naga artefacts
The Pitt Rivers says it holds the world's largest collection of Naga artefacts, most of which were acquired during British colonial rule in India and Myanmar.
Many were collected by John Henry Hutton, a colonial administrator in the Indian Civil Service and an anthropologist, who gave them to the museum more than a century ago.
Among the museum's Naga collection, which includes several thousand items, are 219 items listed as human remains, 39 ancestral human remains and 178 objects believed to contain human hair.
The latest announcement applies only to the ancestral remains, and follows a declaration made by a Naga delegation visiting Oxford in 2025, in which the group asked for the objects to be returned.
Many of the artefacts were seized by British administrators during colonial rule
The museum's director, Prof Laura Van Broekhoven, said: "It has been a long journey to get to this moment."
"We know that this week will be one where we will feel both grief and sadness when looking back on that past, and also where hope is possible as we work towards reconciliation and healing."
After the decision, the Pitt Rivers is now arranging an official handover ceremony with a Naga delegation.
The Naga will then accompany the remains of their ancestors home, with some returning for the first time in more than a century.