The University of Oxford formally transferred the remains of 39 Naga individuals to an Indian delegation following years of administrative efforts. Colonial anthropologists had incorporated the confiscated remains into the museum's collections, keeping them on display until their removal from public view in 2020. The current restitution fulfills a formal request made during a 2025 delegation visit to the institution. Although these ancestral remains are heading home, the Pitt Rivers Museum continues to hold more than 6,000 Naga cultural objects.
Key points
The repatriated ancestral remains will be placed in a respectful burial beneath a joint m…: The repatriated ancestral remains will be placed in a respectful burial beneath a joint memorial in a Nagaland park.
Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum still retains over 6,000 Naga cultural objects in its broader…: Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum still retains over 6,000 Naga cultural objects in its broader collection holdings.
The university has carried out comparable repatriations of human remains to Indigenous gr…: The university has carried out comparable repatriations of human remains to Indigenous groups from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
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Oxford museum returns ancestral Naga skulls to India
- Published
The University of Oxford has returned the remains of 39 people taken from the Naga community during British colonial rule in India.
A delegation of around 30 people from Nagaland, a mountainous state in north-eastern India, attended a ceremony at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum on Monday to mark the handover.
The remains, most of which are skulls, will be taken back to India and given what Naga tribal leaders have described as a "respectful rest". There are plans to bury them under a joint memorial in a park in Nagaland.
Museum director Laura Van Broekhoven described it as "a historic moment that will be part of stories told to next generations".
She said the remains were finally on their way home after overcoming "so much red tape everywhere".
The human remains were displayed at the Oxford museum for decades before being removed from public view in 2020 as part of what it described as a "decolonisation process".
The Pitt Rivers Museum holds more than 6,000 objects associated with Naga culture,…
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