The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford announced that it will return the remains of 39 people to the Naga community in India. The decision marks the end of a long negotiation process between the museum and the indigenous community.
These remains were collected in the early 20th century by British colonial administrators during the colonial period in India. The bodies were part of an ethnographic collection that the museum accumulated over the decades.
Some of these remains remained on public display at the museum until 2020, when they were finally removed from public view. The removal happened after a growing period of scrutiny about colonial museological practices.
The Naga community had been requesting the return of the remains of their ancestors for several years. The museum recognized that the retention of these collections raises significant ethical questions about how museum institutions deal with materials collected in colonial contexts.
