The Kenyah Badeng sunhat was originally obtained during a punitive expedition led by the Brooke Government forces to Usun Apau in 1895/1896. The sunhat, along with other Kenyah Badeng community cultural artefacts, was looted and later donated to the Sarawak Museum in 1903. The Second Rajah Charles Brooke then took the sunhat to the UK in 1905 for display at the Chesterton House Museum in Gloucestershire. After his death in 1918, the collection was dismantled, and the sunhat was acquired by the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1923, where it was rediscovered by Datin Dr Valerie Mashman, during her term as a Research Fellow in 2017-2018.
