Oxford museum returns Naga skulls to India
The gist
Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum handed 39 ancestral Naga remains, mostly skulls, to a Naga delegation.
The remains will be buried under a joint memorial in Nagaland.
How it unfolded
- 2020The Pitt Rivers Museum removed all human remains from public display as part of what it described as a decolonisation process.
- 2021The Forum for Naga Reconciliation set up a research team called Recover, Restore and Decolonise.
- Jun 2025Naga delegates first had access to the remains after their removal from display, laid traditional shawls in homage and ended the visit with a formal declaration asking for the ancestors to come home.
Key terms
- Naga
- A Tibeto-Burman ethnic group native to northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar, made up of many tribes with similar cultures.
- Nagaland
- A state in northeastern India bordering Myanmar, whose name means the land of the Naga people.
- decolonisation
- The ending of colonialism, in which imperial nations gave up domination of foreign territories, often through independence movements.
Source: Wikipedia