Oxford University's Pitt Rivers Museum will return the remains of 39 people taken during Britain's colonial era to the Naga community in northeast India, the museum said on Monday.
The museum, which holds the world's largest collection of Naga artifacts, confirmed it was preparing the repatriation after the university approved a restitution request by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR).
The remains "have been away from their homeland for far too long," museum director Laura Van Broekhoven said in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The human remains were collected in the early 20th century by British colonial administrators and some remained on public display until 2020.
"Repatriation, for the Nagas, is not simply about bones and ancestral remains finding their way back to the land but importantly about memory returning to where it belongs," the FNR and other Naga organizations said in a statement sent to AFP, welcoming the agreement.
The request covered 40 sets of human remains, Pitt Rivers Museum said.
Oxford University approved the return of 39 of them on July 13, concluding that one specimen "does not have a clear provenance as Naga."
The museum said it was "working closely" with the Naga community to agree a date for a handover ceremony, which hasn't been set yet.
The agreement forms part of a wider international movement to repatriate artifacts and human remains acquired by Western institutions during the colonial era.
In 2022, London's Horniman Museum returned 72 artifacts to Nigeria, including 12 Benin bronze artifacts, and earlier this year the University of Edinburgh returned the skulls of six people to a Native American group.
Greece has for decades demanded the return from Britain of the Parthenon Marbles, saying they were looted in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
London insists they were legally acquired and successive British governments have noted that the decision rests with the British Museum, where they are kept.
