It is noteworthy to see that this sort of news about repatriation in GB is picked up in Portuguese media.
A delegation of 23 representatives of the Naga tribes from the Indian state of Nagaland travelled to the UK to demand the return of their ancestors’ remains, which have been kept in British museums for decades.
The Naga delegation’s visit to Oxford had a profound significance. For the first time, representatives of the tribes went to the museum not as researchers, but as direct descendants of those represented there ‘to connect and recover our history, our culture and our belongings’.
“This museum has the largest collection of Naga people in the world, more than 6,000 pieces. We don’t look at these objects as objects. They are our belongings and our heritage,” emphasises Dolly Kikon on behalf of the delegation.
Countries such as the Netherlands have already implemented national repatriation policies. In the UK, there are calls for the government to legislate to protect the remains of colonised communities.
In Portugal, an inventory will be made of cultural goods appropriated from the National Museum of Ethnology (MNE), the museum that houses most of these types of goods.
