Some museum curators might be threatened by a federal law requiring them to return artifacts from a key collection to Native American nations. Not Jennifer McLerran, who turned the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) into an opportunity to expand and build relationships between Ohio University's Kennedy Museum of Art and Southwest Native American tribes.

"It's been great, very beneficial to us,” she says of the act. “I've formed really important contacts with curators from tribal museums. It's a gift from the government.”

Passed in 1990, NAGPRA mandates the return of human remains and sacred relics held public institutions, including museums, to Native American tribes from which they came. When she began researching the Kennedy's extensive collection of Native American artifacts, McLerran discovered a jish, a collection of tools used by Navajo medicine men in religious rites. She contacted the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, and four of its members came to Athens in 2002 to examine the collection (“Sacred Treasures,” Perspectives, Spring/Summer 2002).

The jish has since been returned to the Navajo, and McLerran is consulting with the Zuni and Hopi nations about other items that may need to be repatriated. She also will contact other Southwest tribes as well.

“It hasn't ended yet,” she says.

But while the museum has repatriated some of its collection, McLerran says it has gained far more. Her discussions with Native Americans have given her valuable insight into the collection's meaning and value.

Her connections with Native Americans also have resulted in some new additions to the collection. Edwin Kennedy — who bequeathed his Native American art collection to the university to establish the museum — also left the resources to continue to develop the collections.

“It's enabled us to buy some really choice pieces, to fill in where we don't have complete sets” of items, McLerran says.

She's especially excited about a recent trip to the Southwest, in which she bought pieces from a whole family: A grandmother and her two daughters are weavers, and her grandson and son-in-law are jewelers.

“I like to go right to the individual artists because the museum gets a rock-solid provenance and we can continue to foster these important relationships,” she says.

McLerran's contacts with artists also will pay off for the museum. “They've been really generous about allowing us to interview them, photograph them, and giving us their family histories,” she says.

Those interviews and photographs will be on prominent display in a new gallery, opening in March 2005, that will permanently showcase the Kennedy collection. Constituting one-third of the museum's entire exhibition space, the new gallery will feature weavings, jewelry, and ceramics, as well as multimedia displays showing the artists at work.

The cooperation with Native American scholars and artists goes beyond NAGPRA, McLerran believes. They are genuinely pleased to have their culture recognized and appreciated by a wider audience.

“It's important to them that their work be passed along for future generations,” she says.

For more information about the Kennedy Museum, , visit the Web at http://www.ohiou.edu/museum/.