Oxford Museum Hands 39 Naga Ancestral Remains Back to Their People

The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University in England has formally returned 39 sets of ancestral remains to the Naga people of India. The handover took place on 9 November 2026, and ArtNews has reported on the return.

The remains are mainly human skulls. They were taken during British colonial rule of India and Burma, now Myanmar, and had been in the museum's collection for more than a century.

Almost 30 community members from Nagaland, a state in north-east India, travelled to Britain for the handover ceremony. For them, the day meant the remains would leave a British museum and go home.

The legal change of ownership, known as a transfer of title, was signed by Professor Laura Van Broekhoven for the museum and by Rev. Dr Wati Aier for the Forum for Naga Reconciliation. The University of Oxford Council then handed custody of the remains to the Naga people, working through the Forum and the Naga Tribe Hoho. The museum describes the return as the end of a Naga-led process of dialogue, research and reconciliation that began in 2020.

Naga tribal leaders plan to bury the 39 ancestors together in a joint memorial park. The museum said the remains were to travel from Oxford to Nagaland.

The museum has also said it holds the largest collection of Naga artefacts in the world. Most of those objects were gathered by John Henry Hutton and James Philip Mills between 1910 and 1940, according to the Pitt Rivers Museum's news page.

The return covers only the 39 ancestral remains. The collection lists 219 items as Naga human remains in total, and the other 178 are objects that contain or may contain human hair. Those objects are not part of this handover. The museum removed all human remains, including Naga remains, from its public galleries in 2020.

The return ends one chapter for the families and community leaders who made the journey, and the remains now move into Naga hands for burial.