Alistair Hardaker | Image: A 2025 visit at the Pitt Rivers Museum
Museum plans Handover Ceremony as Naga delegation visits Oxford to accompany 39 ancestral remains home.
Ancestral remains are to be returned from Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum to Nagaland, a mountainous state in northeast India.
The plans are part of a years-long process of dialogue with Naga people, which has involved research and reconciliation that began in 2020, supported by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, in collaboration with the museum.
The Pitt Rivers Museum holds the largest collection of Naga material in the world, with approximately 6,500 Naga objects, 898 of which are on display.
In 2020 the museum removed all human remains from display, which included the ancestral remains of Naga people, which had been held in the museum for decades.
In July 2026, following a formal claim, the University of Oxford Council agreed to the return of 39 ancestral human remains, declining the return of one remain which does not have a clear provenance as Naga.
“We welcome the University of Oxford Council’s intentional decision to return the Naga ancestral remains,” said Forum for Naga Reconciliation’s Recover, Restore and Decolonise project and the Naga Tribe Hohos.
“Repatriation, for the Nagas, is not simply about bones and ancestral remains finding their way back to the land, but importantly it is about memory returning to where it belongs. It is an essential step of a longer journey towards justice and dignity, and towards healing and wholeness. Through this journey, we bring back the light of our ancestors that was dimmed but never extinguished. We pray that it will only grow stronger with every passing generation.”
The museum is now working to agree a date for the repatriation, when the museum will host a Handover Ceremony. A visit by a Naga delegation is being planned to Oxford to accompany the ancestors home.
International transport of the ancestral remains requires CITES approval and a specialist shipping agent, which needs roughly two months to arrange, the museum said. It is currently coordinating hosting, travel and the ceremony for the large delegation.
