LONDON: Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum will return the remains of 39 people taken during Britain’s colonial era to the Naga community in northeast India, the museum said on Monday.
The museum, which holds the world’s largest collection of Naga artefacts, confirmed it was preparing the repatriation after the university approved a restitution request by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR).
The remains “have been away from their homeland for far too long”, museum director Laura Van Broekhoven said in a statement sent to AFP. The human remains were collected in the early 20th century by British colonial administrators and some remained on public display until 2020.
“Repatriation, for the Nagas, is not simply about bones and ancestral remains finding their way back to the land but importantly about memory returning to where it belongs,” the FNR and other Naga organisations said in a statement sent to AFP, welcoming the agreement.
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