Vkur Nukuj (Let us Return): Taking Ancestral Photographs Home

Abstract (English)

This paper explores the process of visual repatriation of thirty three archival photographs of two Nyishi elders (Kop Temi and Bath Heli), undertaken among the Nyishi community of Arunachal Pradesh, India, focusing on archival photographs captured during the colonial period (1946–1948) by British administrator anthropologists Ursula Graham Bower and Charles Robert Stonor housed at the Pitt Rivers Museum, United Kingdom. Using narrative autoethnography and drawing on insider–outsider positionality, the study investigates how ancestral photographs, once detached and decontextualised within imperial archives, regain life, meaning, and agency when returned to indigenous communities. By tracing the provenance of these images and understanding their positionality within the museum's imperial framework, the research highlights the disconnection between the archived photographs and their source community and the construction of different realities. Engaging critically with the politics of representation and the materiality of photographs, the paper traces how these images, upon their return, catalyse storytelling, Nyishi cultural memory, and identity reconstruction among the Nyishi people. The study challenges the colonial logic of static ethnographic documentation, arguing that photographs are not inert artefacts but active participants in indigenous Nyishi world-making processes. It also highlights the ongoing digital divide and constraints that complicate the repatriation of visual heritage to the source community. Ultimately, this study calls for a decolonial ethics of archiving and return, emphasising the relational responsibilities of museums, researchers, and anthropologists in reimagining heritage restitution as a collaborative and reparative act with the source communities.