Images: B/W photos taken by Furer-Haimendorf: Dangling skulls from Yimpang, collected as museum exhibits, hanging at Chingmei camp, 1936, and Group of four Europeans at Mokokchung: J.P. Mills, Furer-Haimendorf, Major Williams and Smith.
The process to repatriate the human remains of Nagas from a museum in the United Kingdom is underway, with a collective at the helm of the initiative, according to a report by PTI.
According to the report, the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) in Oxford, which houses 213 human remains of Nagas among other artefacts from across the globe, had in 2020 announced it would remove the human remains and other “insensitive exhibits” from the display.
“Coming to know of it, an Australia-based Naga anthropologist, Dr. Dolly Kikon, roped in a fellow Naga social scientist, Dr Arkotong Longkumer, who is based in Edinburgh in Scotland, and approached PRM director Laura Van Broekhoven, who in turn urged Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) to be the facilitator in the repatriation process,” the report added.
It is also reported that the museum also houses around 6,000 Naga artefacts but the forum is working on the repatriation of only the human remains, which include parts of skulls, fingers and limbs.
These human remains were taken from Nagaland and other Naga-inhabited areas in the region by the British more than a century ago for the exhibition of the colonised people and the repatriation is part of the “decolonisation” process, the report added.
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