Ellen Konyak was surprised to learn last month that a 19th-century skull from the state of Nagaland in northeastern India was being auctioned off in the United Kingdom.
European colonial authorities had gathered thousands of artifacts from the state, including the horned skull of a Naga tribesman.
The news of the sale upset Konyak, who is a member of the Naga Forum for Reconciliation (NFR), which is working to repatriate these human remains.
“It was shocking to see that, in the twenty-first century, people are still bidding on our ancestral human remains,” she remarked. “It was extremely hurtful and insensitive.”
The skull was listed for auction by The Swan at Tetsworth, an antiques shop in the UK, as part of their “Curious Collector Sale.”
