Nagaland: Morung lecture on repatriation held in Dimapur

Our Reporter

Dimapur, Dec. 6 (EMN): A discussion on “Repatriation: History of loss and the renewal of hope” was held on Tuesday as part of the Morung Express Lecture, XVIII at the Lighthouse Church, Hill View Colony, Dimapur.

Four resource persons namely Arkotong Longkumer, Dolly Kikon, principal of Tetso College Hewasa L Khing, and curator at the Art and Culture department Kikrulhounyu Paphino participated in the discussion.

During the discussion, Khing shared that discussion on ‘repatriation’ has elicited varied responses at Tetso College saying, it is a good starting point for the students to have a relook on the life of their ancestors and see the after-effect of colonisation.

She stated that the discussion has led some students to start projects regarding the definition and meaning of ornaments and started a movement to question themselves, their traditions and significant symbols of the past.

“The question of ‘repatriation’ has brought about two important factors that is reconciliation, which is a two-way process as it can never happen alone, and the other is how to decolonise,” she said.

During the conversation, anthropologist Arkotong Longkumer expressed that the ‘repatriation’ process needs to be a Naga one and people need to think about what Naga repatriation would look like, which was not yet established. Longkumer stated that one of the things they need to clarify was that they were dealing primarily with their ancestral human remains that are currently at Pitt Rivers Museum, while there are also cultural artifacts in the museum.

Currently, Longkumer’s role is to go deeper into the object and try to understand from where those ancestral remains came, its context and history. He expressed hope that they would get some understanding of history which might have been lost or people do not talk about.

During the conversation, Longkumer stressed on the importance of ownership of the process, which according to him is decolonisation, while the other important point was that of ‘memory’ that is to understand the past and leave it for the coming generation.

During the conversation, Kikrulhounyu Paphino said that after repatriation, there would be a sense of belief and hope but opined that it has to be rooted in truth.

Repatriation, he said, goes deeper than the objects and how the Nagas landed up in the museums abroad.

‘The truth is that ethnography belongs to the museum, and it a huge challenge as far as human remains in the museum is concerned,’ Paphino said, adding that human remains have nothing to do with ethnicity but about human rights.