Naga skulls: Indian tribes seeks to bring home ancestral remains from UK museums

A 19th-century bone from the state of Nagaland in north-eastern India was up for auction in the UK last quarter, shocked Ellen Konyak.

One of the many items that European colonial administrators had taken from the state was a Naga tribesman’s winged bone.

The news of the auction, according to Konyak, a member of the Naga Forum for Reconciliation ( NFR ), which is attempting to repatriate these human remains.

She said it was shocking to see that people are still bidding for our ancestors ‘ remains in the twenty-first era. ” It was very indifferent and greatly hurtful”.

The Swan at Tetsworth, the UK-based antique centre that put the skull on auction, advertised it as part of their “Curious Collector Sale”, valued between £3,500 ($4,490) and £4,000 ($5,132). Alongside the skull – which is from a Belgian collection – the sale listed shrunken heads from the Jivaro people of South America and skulls from the Ekoi people of West Africa.

Naga scholars and experts protested against the sale. The chief minister of Nagaland, Konyak’s home state, wrote a letter to the Indian foreign ministry describing the act as “dehumanising” and “continued colonial violence upon our people”.

The auction house withdrew the sale following the outcry, but for the Naga people the episode revived memories of their violent past, prompting them to renew calls for the repatriation of their ancestral remains stored or displayed far from their homeland.

Some of these human bones may have been sold or given as gifts, according to experts, but others may have been removed without entrepreneurs ‘ approval.

Alok Kumar Kanungo, a professor of Naga society, estimates that the UK’s open galleries and private collections single hold around 50, 000 Naga things.

Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), which has the largest Naga collection, features approximately 6,550 items taken from the state, including 41 human remains. The museum also has human remains from several other states of British India.

But in recent years, researchers say, with growing ethical issues about set, sale and display of human bones, many hobbyists are reconsidering their technique.

Kanungo says human bones have become” white elephant” for exhibitions.

They are no longer a cause of visitors ‘ money, are no longer a tool for promoting Naga peoples as “uncivilized,” and have recently become emotionally and socially sensitive issues.

Therefore, exhibitions have begun bringing human remains back from places like New Zealand’s Maori tribes, Taiwan’s Mudan soldiers, Australian Aboriginal people, and Native Hawaiians.

In 2019, PRM told the BBC that it had returned 22 such items.

The number has then increased to 35, according to a museum spokesperson. ” So far these]objects ] have all been returned to Australia, New Zealand, US and Canada”.

As part of an ethical review, the museum removed Naga skulls from public display in 2020 and placed them in storage. This is when FNR demanded their repatriation for the first time.

According to the gallery, the process of returning people remains” may take between 18 months and some years, depending on the complexity of the case.” It is still not clear whether Naga descendants have filed a formal claim.

More challenging is it to return people bones than to retrieve artifacts. To decide whether the items were collected morally, to identify their descendants, and to understand difficult international laws governing human remains movement, extensive research is required.

To accomplish results, the Naga community established a team called Recover, Restore and Decolonize under the direction of archaeologists Dolly Kikon and Arkotong Longkumer.

” It is a bit like policeman work”, Longkumer said. We must “read between the lines to really discover the precise nature of the choices and the source of the information,” says the researcher.

But for the Naga citizens, this method is not only operational. ” We are dealing with people remnants”, said Konyak. ” It’s an international and legal process, but it’s also a moral one for us”.

The team has been organizing courses, distributing education materials, including comic books and videos, to raise awareness in villages by meeting Naga elders and traveling to villages.

In addition, they are attempting to reach agreement on issues like the repatriation of bones. Although the majority of Nagas today practice Christianity, their ancestors were faiths who practiced various birth and death rituals.

Yet Naga elders were conscious that their ancestral remains were located somewhere else, according to the study. According to scientist and anthropology Tiatoshi Jamir, an elder said that this might cause” the heart of their ancestors to become restless.”

Even after reading about the bones in a nearby report in the early 2000s, Jamir claimed he was unaware of them until he read about them in a local newspaper.

In 1832, the British took control of the Naga regions, and in 1873, a special permission, the Inner Line Permit, was established to completely restrict travel to the area.

Historians say the colonial administrators put down any rebellions and often burnt Naga villages to subdue them, in the process erasing much of their important cultural markers such as paintings, engravings and artefacts.

Konyak claims to have found that a member of her community and community is one of the human remains on PRM’s list.

“I am like, ‘Oh my goodness! It belongs to one of my ancestors’,” she told the BBC.

When the bones are returned, she is still unsure of how the final customs will be carried out.

” But we want them up as a mark of respect to our seniors”, she said. ” To recapture our story. To say our narrative”.

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