I have hesitated for a long time before writing about the repatriation of Naga ancestral remains.
Not because I have nothing to say, but perhaps because I have had too much respect for those who began the conversation before many of us had even noticed it. I have followed the discussion around the Naga ancestral remains at the Pitt Rivers Museum, particularly through the Morung Lecture series, from its early public conversations. For much of this time, I chose to remain silent. I wanted to listen, read, observe the arguments and understand where the conversation was heading. Now, with the University of Oxford having formally agreed to return 39 Naga ancestral human remains, I feel that perhaps remaining silent is no longer enough.
I write this not as a member of RRaD, nor as someone directly involved in the repatriation process. I write simply as a young scholar from Nagaland and as a Naga citizen who has been watching this journey unfold. I do not claim to have the final word on the matter. In fact, I am writing because I believe there should be many voices. I welcome the return of our ancestors.
I also deeply appreciate the work of Prof. Dolly Kikon, Prof. Arkotong Longkumer, the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR), the RRaD team, Naga elders, tribal representatives and the many others who have kept this difficult conversation alive. The Pitt Rivers Museum records that the process began in 2020 and developed through dialogue with the FNR, RRaD, tribal Hohos, elders, churches and communities. In 2021, RRaD was formed to undertake participatory research and facilitate community engagement.
For that reason, I do not see this as a matter that began and ended in an academic room. It has gradually entered our public conversation. And perhaps that is one of the most important things about this journey.
A conversation that has not been without questions
What I appreciate most about the repatriation discussion is that it has not been entirely one-directional.
There have been questions. There have been disagreements.
There have been moments of discomfort.
And I think that is healthy.
Dr Salome Zhimomi, for instance, welcomed repatriation but raised an important question about community ownership. Who initiated the process? Were traditional institutions and tribal bodies sufficiently involved at the beginning? Can academics initiate a process concerning community heritage and subsequently become its principal interpreters? Her concern was not simply about whether the remains should return, but about who gets to speak and decide in the name of the Naga community.
Dr Asangba Tzudir raised another set of questions. He acknowledged the significance of repatriation but asked what should happen once the remains return. Should they be buried? Preserved? How do we retain the historical knowledge associated with them? He also raised the difficult question of how the colonial history being discussed relates to the much more recent histories of militarisation, conflict and violence experienced by Nagas. His argument was not that these questions should stop repatriation, but that the process needed dialogue, historical consciousness and a pragmatic understanding of what “decolonisation” should mean in the Naga context.
More recently, Dr. Michael. T. Heniese has raised another important anthropological question. He welcomes the return and takes seriously the feelings of Naga elders and representatives, but asks us to examine the genealogy of the grievance itself: how did the return of ancestral remains become articulated as a significant collective Naga concern at this particular historical moment? He also cautions against allowing the language of colonial trauma and healing to overshadow the long history of post-1947 militarisation and state violence experienced by Naga communities.
And then there is the recent intervention by Joel Rodrigues, whose archival work takes us in another direction. His account of Naga skulls collected by colonial officers such as Robert Woodthorpe, and of the ways human remains entered scientific and museum collections, reminds us that behind the contemporary debate are individual human beings whose names, relationships and funerary contexts were often reduced to numbers and specimens.
I do not see these voices as cancelling one another. I see them as a conversation.
One asks, who speaks for the community? Another asks, what happens when the remains come home? Another asks, how did this grievance become a collective concern? Another reminds us, what actually happened to these bodies in the first place?
Perhaps all four questions are necessary.
Listening has been part of the process
This is also why I have some difficulty with the suggestion that the repatriation conversation has simply been imposed upon Naga society by a handful of academics.
There is certainly room to question representation. There should be. But we should also acknowledge the amount of conversation that has taken place since this process began. The Morung Lecture XIV, Naga Ancestral Remains, Repatriation and Healing of the Land, opened the public conversation in July 2022. It was followed by Morung Lecture XV, Journey from the Heart: Naga Repatriation and Healing of the Land, and later Morung Lecture XVIII, A Conversation on Repatriation: Histories of Loss and Renewal of Hope. The conversation returned again in Morung Lecture XXII in 2025, Healing and Wholeness through Repatriation: A Naga Perspective. These were not simply occasions for presenting a settled position; they created spaces where questions, reflections and disagreements could be aired publicly. And the conversation did not remain confined to Dimapur or Kohima.
RRaD’s own record shows engagements with communities and institutions in different parts of the Naga homeland. There were consultations in Mon, including an engagement with the Konyak Union; dialogue with the Lotha Hoho; a public dialogue at Jubilee Memorial College in Mokokchung; and later engagements with Sumi frontal organisations in Zunheboto. There were also wider public and educational conversations, including the Indigenous Heritage & Decolonization: The Naga Repatriation Journey programme.
What strikes me about this is not simply the number of meetings. It is the attempt to take the conversation to people. The process has also tried to communicate beyond academic circles. RRaD has produced public videos, media materials, interviews, visual stories and educational material in English and in forms intended to reach Naga audiences more widely. The A Path Home graphic novel by Arkotong Longkumer and Meren Imchen is one such example: an attempt to tell the story of repatriation through a form that is accessible beyond scholarly writing. RRaD has also held media-orientation programmes and public discussions intended to help journalists understand the history and complexities of repatriation.
Perhaps even more telling is the effort to move the conversation beyond English. The FNR’s public statement on repatriation has been translated into numerous Naga languages, including Angami, Ao, Chakhesang, Chang, Konyak, Lotha, Phom, Rengma, Sümi, Tangkhul, Yimkhiung, Zeme and several others.
For me, this matters.
If the intention were simply to make a claim on behalf of the Nagas without the Nagas, there would be little reason to undertake the slow and sometimes difficult work of translating, travelling, explaining, listening and returning to the conversation.
(To be continued)
Repakaba Tzudir,
Ph.D. Scholar,
Department of Sociology, Nagaland University.
Friday, September 18, 2026