Why the Nagas are attempting to repatriate their ancestral human remains from a museum in Britain

What is the initiative?

In 2020, the iconic Pitt Rivers Museum in England’s Oxford announced that it would take its collection of “human remains” and other “insensitive” exhibits off display, following a three-year-long “ethical review”.

According to the museum director Laura Van Broekhoven, these items, sourced during the expansion of the British Empire, played into stereotypical thinking about cultures across the globe as “savage” or “primitive”. The museum, which has a rich collection of 500,000 items representing almost all phases of human existence across the world, also said that it was reaching out to communities for restitution and repatriation of such remains to their rightful homes.

The news led Melbourne-based Naga anthropologist, Dolly Kikon, to reach out to Broekhoven, and ask if Naga remains, housed in the museum more than hundred years, could be repatriated to the Naga homelands.

This request has spawned a community-led initiative among the Nagas for repatriation. The Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) — a Nagaland-based collective which, since 2008, has been a key facilitator in the Indo-Naga peace process — is the main mover of the process.

What are the Naga objects that the Pitt Rivers Museum houses?

The museum is home to the largest Naga collection in the world: approximately 6,500 objects, 898 of which are on display.

“The Museum is largely typologically displayed but there is a dedicated Naga display in the Upper Gallery,” said Broekhoven in an email to The Indian Express.

The types of objects include objects of everyday Naga social life including not just clothing items, agricultural tools, tools, figures, basketry, ceramics, musical instruments but also ancestral human remains. Most of these objects were sourced by two colonial administrators James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton in the 1800s.

What about the human remains?

Broekhoven said that the ancestral remains (including skulls, trophy heads, a part of a finger, artefacts containing human) originate from at least thirteen different Naga groups. The largest number of remains are attributed to Konyak Naga (78), followed by Angami Naga (38) and Sumi Naga (30).

So, has the repatriation process begun?

Yes, but it is in its initial stages. Repatriation is a long and complex process that takes years. Most successful repatriation efforts (such as of New Zealand’s Moriori and Australia’s Tasmanian Aboriginal people from the Natural History Museum, London to their native lands) have taken at least two decades.

But in the Naga case, the conversation has begun. In 2020, the FNR, in collaboration with Kikon and Arkotong Longkumer, another Naga anthropologist, based in Edinburgh, formed a Naga research team called “Recover Restore and Decolonise” (RRaD) in 2020.

Since then, the RRaD team, comprising Nagas from all walks of life, are conducting interviews, holding community-facing meetings, and generating public awareness about the initiative. Many of these meetings are with community elders. It is the first step before they build a case to make an official claim to the University of Oxford (under which the museum falls), which is now the legal owner of the remains.

What role is the Pitt Rivers Museum playing?

The Pitt Rivers Museum, too, is doing its part to facilitate the process. It said it takes each request or claim [for repatriation of objects or human remains] on a case-by-case basis. “When it concerns human remains we try to work closely with the descendant communities to ensure the process can develop as smoothly as possible,” the museum said in a statement.

In December 2022, Broekhoven, the museum’s director, made a trip to Nagaland to meet with the stakeholders, including community elders.

The museum, in a statement in 2020, said that the processes of colonial collecting were often “violent and inequitable towards those peoples being colonised”. “With the museum’s complicated colonial history, it was important for us not to shy away from difficult conversations,” said Broekhoven.

While the museum has conducted a few successful repatriation efforts, it has, for the last few years, been working with the Australian government towards the repatriation of 18 human remains: the return was approved by Oxford University Council on 11 May 2020.

“A lot of people might think about the removal of certain objects or the idea of restitution as a loss, but what we are trying to show is that we aren’t losing anything but creating space for more expansive stories. That is at the heart of decolonisation,” Broekhoven said.

What does the Naga community feel about the initiative?

Longkumer, the Edinburgh-based anthropologist, who is part of the initiative, said that while the repatriation process may take years to fructify, the initiative had opened up “real conversations”. “The thread that runs through all of it is to heal, to reconcile, to take control of your own history,” he said. This is especially important for the Naga community, which has undergone decades of violence and trauma, owing to a cycle of armed insurgencies and subsequent state clampdowns.

Kikon said that as a tribal anthropologist, it had always been “disturbing” to see Naga objects being displayed as “exotic and primitive” in museums across the world. This process, she said, will aid in Nagas “taking control of their own narrative”.