For eighty years, the bones of thirty-nine Naga ancestors rested not in the soil of their homeland but in the glass cases of an Oxford museum, catalogued as specimens of a people deemed lesser by the empire that took them. Now, after six years of deliberate negotiation and community-led reckoning, the Pitt Rivers Museum has announced their return to Nagaland — a moment that speaks not only to the weight of colonial theft but to the enduring human need to bury one's dead with dignity. The repatriation, set to conclude with a traditional ceremony in Kohima before year's end, is less a museum pol
Oxford museum returns 39 Naga ancestors after 80 years, ending colonial chapter
Naga ancestral remains were taken without consent during colonial period and displayed for 80 years, denying communities proper burial and spiritual closure.