Oxford hands over remains of 39 Naga people to community

The University of Oxford formally handed over the remains of 39 Naga people to Naga leaders on 9 November 2026, at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Most are skulls taken during British colonial rule in India.

The handover followed a formal request by a Naga delegation in 2025. The museum had displayed the remains for decades before removing them from public view in 2020, as part of what it called a decolonization process. It announced the planned return in September 2026.

Around 30 delegates from Nagaland, a mountainous state in northeastern India, attended the ceremony, where the museum also signed an agreement with Naga leaders, the BBC said.

The collection and the request

The museum’s website lists 219 items of Naga human remains, rather than the remains of 219 people. The items entered the collection between 1910 and 1940 and were mostly collected by two colonial administrators who were anthropologists. The museum says objects collected during that period were frequently confiscated during punitive military expeditions rather than freely given.

The Forum for Naga Reconciliation and anthropologists Dolly Kikon and Arkotong Longkumer initiated discussions with the museum about the possible return of Naga ancestral remains.

The remains handed over are to be transported to India. Naga leaders plan to bury them under a joint memorial in a park in Nagaland, giving them what the leaders called a “respectful rest.”