‘Our forefathers are coming back’: Naga people celebrate after Oxford museum agrees to return remains

Following six years of talks, Pitt Rivers Museum will return body parts collected by British colonial administrators to north-east India

Anthropologists and community leaders from Nagaland, a remote state in north-eastern India bordering Myanmar, have expressed joy and relief that human remains belonging to their ancestors that had been on display in a British museum for nearly a century are finally being returned.

On Monday, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford announced that 39 pieces of human remains – including parts of skulls, a finger and a piece of skin with hair – belonging to the Naga tribes, will be returned to Nagaland after six years of negotiation between the community and the museum.