University of Edinburgh repatriates ancestral remains of Paiwan fighters in ‘milestone of transitional justice for Indigenous peoples’

The skulls of four tribal warriors killed nearly 150 years ago have been returned by a Scottish university to a Taiwanese Indigenous community in a move hailed as a “milestone of transitional justice”.

The skulls were thought to have been taken as war trophies by Japanese soldiers who invaded southern Taiwan in 1874 and fought the Paiwan people. They were then passed on to the University of Edinburgh in 1907.