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The University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum transferred 39 ancestral human remains primarily consisting of skulls to a 30-member delegation from Nagaland during a ceremony on November 10 2026 marking their return after more than a century in Britain. Museum director Laura Van Broekhoven oversaw the event at which both parties signed a formal agreement before the remains were prepared for transport to India. According to the museum the ancestors will receive a respectful rest upon arrival in Nagaland where they are to be buried beneath a joint memorial in a public park.
A formal claim for the remains was lodged in February 2026 by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation along with the Recover Restore and Decolonise collective and multiple tribal organisations. The University of Oxford Council approved the return of 39 items on July 13 2026 while declining one additional remain that lacked clear Naga provenance according to a Pitt Rivers Museum statement. The decision followed a Naga delegation visit to Oxford the previous year and built upon collaborative discussions that began in 2020.
Most of the remains were acquired between 1910 and 1940 by colonial administrators and anthropologists John Henry Hutton and James Philip Mills often during punitive military expeditions in the Naga hills a Pitt Rivers Museum assessment found. The institution maintains the world’s largest collection of Naga cultural material with approximately 6500 objects of which 898 are on display. All human remains were removed from public view at the museum in 2020 as part of a broader review of its holdings.
Naga partners have described the repatriation as a Naga-wide movement of healing and unification that extends beyond the physical return of remains to encompass the restoration of memory to its homeland. This represents the first time an indigenous community from India has secured the repatriation of ancestral remains from a British institution The Print reported citing community leaders. The ancestors are expected to arrive in Dimapur with the delegation before interment at a site intended as a symbol of peace and oneness for the Naga people across generations.
The Pitt Rivers Museum has conducted similar repatriations of human remains to indigenous groups in Australia New Zealand and the United States in previous years its records show. Van Broekhoven called the Naga handover a historic moment that will feature in stories told to future generations after the parties navigated extensive bureaucratic requirements. She highlighted six years of joint work on the sensitive matter during the ceremony.
An additional 178 items in the museum’s Naga collection may contain human hair though these were not part of the current repatriation Pitt Rivers Museum documentation specifies. Consultations involved tribal hohos elders churches and communities throughout the Naga homeland to establish appropriate protocols for the ancestors’ care and journey home. Community members who viewed the skulls in Oxford last year addressed them directly in traditional dialects as part of the reconciliation process.
