BYM grapples with the legacy of colonialism
'The ongoing decolonisation work at the Pitt Rivers Museum will see the return of more than two hundred items of Naga ancestral remains.'
Quakers are drawing church attention to work by an Oxford museum and a Naga research team to return human remains to the mountainous border area between Myanmar and India, the Naga Hills.
The ongoing decolonisation work at the Pitt Rivers Museum will see the return of more than two hundred items of Naga ancestral remains, including human skulls and bones.
Friendship between Quakers and the people of the Naga Hills dates from Horace Alexander’s visits of the 1950s and Marjorie Sykes’ peace missions in the 1960s. Judith Baker, Britain Yearly Meeting’s (BYM) conciliation & peacebuilding support coordinator, and ecumenical & interfaith officer, said on the Quakers in Britain website that ‘current Quaker work includes a small group of appointed Friends “quietly accompanying” a Naga civil society group (at their request) working nonviolently to end violent conflict in the region’.
BYM has been asked by its Naga friends to publicise the mueum’s work to other churches to create solidarity and understanding, which it is now doing through Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI).
This includes an article by two Naga anthropologists, Arkotong Longkumer of the University of Edinburgh and Dolly Kikon of the University of Melbourne, describing their work.
The two academics have been working with Naga civil society, elders, researchers, church leaders and the Pitt Rivers Museum in an exploratory dialogue. More information – including the article – can be read on the Quakers in Britain website.
Other churches are actively exploring anti-racism and decolonisation and the Racial Justice Advocacy Forum of CTBI has been running a series of webinars exploring reparations.
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