The FNR said the human remains are valued at 3,500-4,000 UK pounds and the provenance is traced to the Ex Francios Coppens Collection from Belgium. “The Naga ancestral human skull is part of an auction titled ‘The curious collector sale’ and catalogued alongside antiquarian books, manuscripts, paintings, jewellery, ceramics and furniture,” the FNR said in a statement.It condemned the “inhumane and violent practice” where the indigenous ancestral human remains continue to be collector’s items in the 21st century.“The Naga human remains were taken without people’s consent in effect appropriated by colonial administrators and soldiers who occupied the Naga homeland in the 19th century even as Naga villages resisted British punitive expeditions,” the FNR said.The organisation said that the human remains symbolise the violence that the British colonial power unleashed on the Nagas. “Throughout British rule, the Naga people were defined as ‘savages’ and ‘headhunters’, which are insulting tropes that continue to be perpetuated today,” the organisation said.It expressed anguish that the skull of a Naga ancestor was being auctioned by an art dealer in the UK and urged the governments of the UK and India to “implement Article 12 by enabling access and/or repatriation of human remains in their possession…”
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