In a handover ceremony at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford this week, a cherished cultural object – a sunhat taken violently by British colonisers at the end of the 19^th century during punitive expeditions to Sarawak, now part of Malaysia - was returned to the Kenyah Badeng community.

The sunhat was described by Badeng representatives at the ceremony as an integral part of Sarawak’s survival and crucial to the Badeng’s cultural heritage.

The event was equally significant for the Pitt Rivers Museum, marking the Museum’s first repatriation of a cultural object. Previous repatriations have been restricted to ancestral remains. It follows hard on the heels of a decision made last September by Maasai representatives from Kenya and Tanzania to retain rather than repatriate five Maasai ancestral objects also in the Pitt Rivers collection.

The sunhat is made of woven bamboo and is decorated with a design of human figures. It was one of six Sarawak artefacts originally donated to the Sarawak Museum in 1903 by British government administrator, Charles Agar Bampfylde. The sunhat still bears the Museum’s original inventory number ‘1234’.

Two years later, it entered the collection of the Second Rajah of Sarawak, Charles Brooke, and was housed at the Chesterton House Museum. The Pitt Rivers acquired the sunhat after the Chesterton Museum closed in 1923, along with nearly seven hundred other Sarawak items and archival photographs.

Detailed provenance research, including evidence gathered from Badeng oral history, confirmed the sunhat had been looted. When the Sarawak made a formal request in May 2023 for the return of the sunhat, the Museum’s curators felt able to recommend its repatriation as a way of correcting the violence of its removal.

“This work of redress is a crucial part of the work we want and need to do as it helps to restore trust and understanding, and builds hope for a future of peace through partnership.”

Prof Dr Laura van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum

The British-led attacks on the Kenyah Badeng people were commissioned by members of the Brooke family, an independent monarchy known as the ‘White Rajahs’. The Brooke family ruled the sovereign state of Sarawak, located on the northwest coast of Borneo, for 105 years until it became a British colony in 1946.

The attacks in 1895 and 1896 on the Kenyah Badeng and other indigenous groups were intended to overcome resistance to Charles Brooke’s programme for expanding the Rajahs' geographical influence – increasing tax revenues in the process.

Thousands of indigenous people lost their lives during these attacks; many others were permanently displaced. Women and children - who remained in the villages largely undefended - were massacred, longhouses were burnt, and the looting of objects was widespread.

To the Kenyah Badeng people, the sunhat plays a hugely significant role in their culture. Not any woman could weave it and not any woman could wear it. Its role was to provide both physical and spiritual protection for a mother and her child and its survival is important for highlighting the overlooked roles of women and children during a period of violence and cruel oppression.

Since entering the Pitt Rivers, the sunhat has never been on display. However, following this week’s ceremony transferring ownership to the Kenyah Badeng Association (Kebana), it will go on exhibition at the Borneo Cultures Museum in Sarawak, alongside the five other looted Badeng objects gifted by Charles Bampfylde.

Van Broekhoven said she hopes this new partnership marks the beginning of a long-lasting relationship. “I am especially grateful for the work that has been done to streamline the process,” said Dr van Broekhoven, “enabling us to act faster than we have been able to do in the past. This helps build practice and understanding, making us even more confident that museums and communities, supported by their governments, can work alongside each other towards reconciliation and healing.”

“Reconciliation and healing is at the heart of what we do,” she added.

Photo: Badeng woven bamboo sunhat, late 19^th cent

Courtesy of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford