by KIKE CALVO
Walk through some of the great ethnographic museums of Europe and you encounter an extraordinary record of humanity.
Masks. Weapons. Textiles. Ritual objects. Jewelry. Musical instruments. Sculptures.
But hidden within the history of many collections is a much more difficult question:
How did these things get here?
And sometimes an even more uncomfortable one:
What happens when the “collection” isn’t an object at all—but a human being?
In September 2026, Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum announced an important decision.
Thirty-nine ancestral human remains belonging to Naga communities are to leave Oxford and return to their ancestral homeland in Nagaland, northeastern India.
For the museum, they have been part of a collection.
For the communities asking for their return, they are ancestors.
That difference in language may tell us almost everything we need to understand about why this story matters.
Model of a life-size grave figure of a warrior
Angami Naga group, Nerhema village, Nagaland, India. This model has been dressed as a warrior who has taken a head. His clothing, neck ornament, and the carving of a head on his left palm all indicate success in warfare. Life-sized versions of such figures are rare, as they were only installed at the graves of renowned men. By the 1930s, such effigies were no longer being made in the area following the spread of Christianity and a ban on headhunting by the British colonial authorities. Collected by J. P. Mills in 1917; donated in 1938. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Photo © Kike Calvo.
Who Are the Naga?
The term Naga encompasses numerous Indigenous communities whose traditional homelands extend across what is today northeastern India and neighboring Myanmar.
They possess extraordinarily rich cultural traditions encompassing textiles, architecture, oral histories, woodcarving, music, agriculture, ceremonies and distinctive systems of community identity.
During British colonial rule, the Naga Hills also became a subject of intense European anthropological interest.
Collectors, administrators and anthropologists accumulated thousands of objects.
Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum eventually acquired what it describes as the largest collection of Naga material culture in the world.
Today it contains approximately 6,500 Naga objects, nearly 900 of which are displayed. Much of this material entered the museum between 1910 and 1940.
But among those collections were human remains.
How Did Naga Ancestors End Up in Oxford?
This is where the story becomes uncomfortable.
Many were brought to Britain by John Henry Hutton and James Philip Mills, both colonial administrators in the Indian Civil Service as well as anthropologists.
For decades, the language of museums could make this process sound almost benign.
Objects were “collected.”
Specimens were “acquired.”
Collections were “assembled.”
But those words can conceal an enormous amount of history.
The Pitt Rivers Museum now acknowledges that the acquisition of some Naga material was connected directly to colonial violence and coercion.
Its research indicates that remains and objects were sometimes confiscated during British punitive military expeditions rather than voluntarily given by communities.
That changes the question.
Instead of asking:
Why should museums return their collections?
perhaps we first need to ask:
Under what circumstances did those collections leave their communities?
When People Became “Specimens”
Anthropology has changed enormously during the past century.
But early anthropology developed alongside European colonial expansion.
Human beings—and sometimes their bodies—could be categorized, measured, photographed and collected as evidence supposedly demonstrating differences among human populations.
The Pitt Rivers itself has confronted this history.
In 2020, the museum removed 120 human remains from public display, including Naga ancestral remains, South American tsantsas commonly known as “shrunken heads,” and the mummy of an Egyptian child.
The museum explained that displaying such remains had sometimes reinforced ideas of other peoples as “primitive” or exotic rather than helping visitors understand them.
That decision raises an intriguing museum question:
Does displaying something automatically educate us about it?
Not necessarily.
Context determines meaning.
219 Items Classified as Naga Human Remains
The numbers reveal how complicated museum classifications can become.
The Pitt Rivers Museum currently lists 219 items associated with Naga human remains.
But that doesn’t mean 219 bodies.
The museum says the category includes 39 ancestral human remains, primarily skulls, and 178 objects containing—or potentially containing—human hair.
The current return concerns the 39 ancestors.
Even that distinction reveals something fascinating about museums.
An inventory number may describe an item accurately from the perspective of cataloguing.
But cataloguing cannot necessarily describe what something means.
A skull may be a museum specimen.
It may simultaneously be someone’s ancestor.
A lock of hair may be a collection object.
It may also possess spiritual, familial or ceremonial significance.
Museums increasingly have to navigate both realities.
Why 39—and Not 40?
There’s an interesting detail behind the final number.
The Forum for Naga Reconciliation formally requested the return of 40 ancestral human remains.
In March 2026, Oxford University’s official Gazette recorded the museum’s recommendation that 39 should be returned.
Then, on July 13, 2026, the University of Oxford Council formally approved the return of 39.
One additional remain was not approved because its provenance could not be established clearly enough to identify it as Naga.
That may sound bureaucratic, but provenance is fundamental to repatriation.
Who is the ancestor?
Where did that person come from?
Who has authority to receive them?
Returning human remains ethically requires answering these questions as carefully as possible.
The Return Didn’t Begin in Oxford
Perhaps the most important aspect of this story is something easily missed in a headline.
This wasn’t simply a British museum deciding one morning to give something back.
The museum describes the process as Naga-led.
The Forum for Naga Reconciliation and its Recover, Restore and Decolonise team worked with tribal Hohos, elders, churches and communities across the Naga homeland.
Dialogue began in 2020.
Five years later, in June 2025, Oxford hosted the first formal Naga delegation in the history of the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Imagine that moment.
People had traveled thousands of miles to encounter ancestors who had themselves been transported thousands of miles away more than a century earlier.
The delegation was given access to the ancestral remains.
Traditional shawls were laid in homage.
There were prayers, songs and ceremonies.
The museum describes participants expressing grief, anger, recognition and hope.
Suddenly this was no longer principally a discussion about museum policy.
It was about people meeting their ancestors.
“They’ve Been Here in a Foreign Land for More Than a Century”
One testimony is particularly powerful.
Dr. Vihuto Asumi, president of the Sumi Hoho, explained that he believed the ancestors’ spirits had not been able to rest while they remained in a foreign land, and that bringing them home could contribute to spiritual healing.
Another representative described recognizing remains he believed belonged to his own community.
That illustrates something easy to overlook when discussing repatriation intellectually.
For descendant communities, these aren’t necessarily debates about museum ethics.
They can involve family, spirituality, memory, dignity and mourning.
The museum describes the return not simply as restitution, but as part of a process of healing and reconciliation.
The Naga-Oxford Declaration
During the June 2025 visit, representatives produced what became known as the Naga-Oxford Declaration on Repatriation.
The declaration commits the communities to bringing their ancestors home and creating a shared memorial resting place intended to represent healing, peace and Naga unity.
It also extends solidarity to Indigenous peoples elsewhere pursuing the return of ancestors and cultural heritage.
That last element makes this story much larger than Oxford.
Because museums around the world are confronting similar questions.
How Many Human Remains Are Still in Museums?
The answer is difficult to comprehend.
The Pitt Rivers Museum alone says it cares for more than 2,800 human remains originating from many parts of the world.
And Pitt Rivers is only one institution.
Human remains entered European and North American museums through archaeology, colonial expeditions, medical collecting, anthropology, warfare, grave disturbance, purchase and other circumstances.
Not every case is identical.
Not every community wants the same outcome.
And that is important.
Repatriation shouldn’t simply replace one universal museum policy with another.
Some descendant communities request physical return.
Others may ask museums to continue caring for remains but according to particular cultural protocols.
Some permit research.
Others don’t.
Some may allow display.
Others consider display profoundly inappropriate.
Pitt Rivers itself says decisions about care should be developed with communities rather than assuming every culture has the same wishes.
That principle may represent one of the most important changes happening inside museums today:
from ownership toward relationship.
What Does “Repatriation” Actually Mean?
The word appears frequently in discussions about museums, but it encompasses several related ideas.
Repatriation generally refers to returning people, ancestral remains or culturally significant material to their country or community of origin.
Restitution often describes restoring cultural property that was wrongfully removed.
But increasingly another idea is becoming important:
shared stewardship.
Instead of asking only:
Who owns this?
Museums and communities can ask:
Who should care for it?
Who has the authority to interpret it?
Who should decide whether it can be photographed, studied or displayed?
Whose knowledge belongs in the museum record?
Those questions can radically change what a museum is.
The Museum Label May Not Know the Whole Story
This connects directly with another fascinating transformation taking place in anthropology.
For generations, museums largely controlled interpretation.
A curator wrote the label.
The institution established the classification.
Visitors read it.
But what if the community that created the object understands it differently?
What if the museum doesn’t know its original name?
What if an object described as “ceremonial” had a much more specific purpose?
What if certain knowledge surrounding it isn’t supposed to be public?
What if something classified as an “object” isn’t considered an object at all?
Modern digital technologies—including photogrammetry, 3D scanning and virtual reality—are beginning to allow source communities thousands of miles away to examine museum collections and contribute knowledge about them.
But technology alone doesn’t solve the underlying issue.
The deeper question remains:
Who gets to tell the story?
Should Everything Be Returned?
This is where the conversation becomes much more nuanced.
Museums preserve extraordinary records of human creativity.
They enable research.
They allow millions of people to encounter cultures and histories they may never otherwise experience.
They can preserve objects that might have disappeared through war, environmental destruction or social change.
But those benefits don’t erase questions surrounding how particular collections were acquired.
Returning Naga ancestors doesn’t automatically imply emptying every ethnographic museum.
Instead, it asks us to examine each history carefully.
Was something traded?
Purchased?
Gifted?
Excavated?
Taken during war?
Removed under colonial authority?
Taken from a grave?
Collected with meaningful consent?
And perhaps most importantly:
What does the originating community want today?
There may not be one answer.
But there should be a conversation.
A Museum Can Change Without Erasing History
Some people fear that returning collections means erasing history.
Perhaps the opposite can happen.
A museum that explains why something was returned may tell a much richer story than a museum that simply keeps it behind glass.
Imagine an empty display case.
Beside it, instead of an artifact:
This ancestor was once displayed here.
They were taken from their homeland during the colonial period.
More than a century later, their descendants asked for their return.
They are now home.
That empty space could teach us an extraordinary amount about colonialism, anthropology, dignity and the evolution of museums.
Absence can become part of the story.
The Long Journey Home
The return isn’t complete simply because Oxford approved it.
Transporting ancestral human remains internationally involves legal requirements, specialist handling and cultural protocols. The museum says it is coordinating a handover ceremony in Oxford, after which a Naga delegation will accompany the ancestors home to Nagaland.
Their destination is expected to include a shared memorial resting place intended as a place of healing and peace.
Think about the geography of that journey.
More than a century ago, ancestors traveled from remote communities in the Naga homeland into the machinery of the British Empire and eventually into an Oxford museum.
Now the route reverses.
Oxford.
India.
Nagaland.
Home.
But the meaning of the journey has changed completely.
This time, Naga people are deciding where their ancestors belong.
What Travelers Can Learn From This
For those of us who travel to photograph cultures, ceremonies, masks, traditions and people, there is another lesson here.
Curiosity is essential.
But curiosity alone isn’t enough.
We need context.
When I photograph a mask, I don’t simply want to know whether it makes an interesting photograph.
I want to understand:
Who made it?
Who wears it?
When?
Why?
What does it communicate?
Can anyone see it?
Can anyone photograph it?
What does it mean to the people standing beside me?
Because a beautiful photograph without understanding can capture the surface of something while completely missing its story.
The same is true inside museums.
Perhaps Museums Are Becoming Places of Conversation
The museum of the nineteenth century was largely built around collecting.
The museum of the twentieth century became increasingly focused on preservation, scholarship and public education.
Perhaps one role of the twenty-first-century museum will be different.
Connection.
Connecting objects with the people who made them.
Connecting archival records with oral histories.
Connecting curators with cultural knowledge holders.
Connecting descendants with ancestors.
And sometimes acknowledging that the most ethical act of stewardship is to let something—or someone—go home.
The 39 Naga ancestors leaving Oxford are therefore much more than a museum story.
They raise a deceptively simple question about cultural heritage:
When something has been away for more than a century, who gets to decide where it belongs?
In this case, after generations away, the ancestors are going home.
And perhaps the return itself will become one of the most important stories the Pitt Rivers Museum can tell.
