 I'm excited next that I get to participate in a conversation with a group of thinkers relating to and thinking about indigenous art and organizing. It's a conversation of policy, practice, and representation. I'd like to welcome to the stage our three participants, Jeff Gibson, Jody Gillette, and Kevin Gover. I had the pleasure early this week of speaking individually with all of you and one of the things that I heard a very common agreement about was the very basic need for a very basic and ongoing conversation to continue. And that's a conversation about status. In other words, we need to talk about power dynamics, one that often characterizes the difference between being an insider and an outsider and how that affects how one is heard. In a conversation about the position of native artists and indigenous cultural histories, this typically highlights the dichotomy of working inside or outside the mainstream art world, but it can also describe the experience of being inside or outside native communities as well. So three recent events which push on and inflect the conversation today I'd just like to mention for context. The first is the fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, specifically the long-term strategic protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The second is at the Walker Art Museum in Minnesota, where recently there was a mediated process by which the artist, Sam Durant, who will be joining us here later today, transferred the intellectual property rights for his contested work, scaffold to the Dakota people with the joint agreement that the piece was destroyed. And finally, protests and activism in response to artist Jimmy Durham's traveling retrospective, which opens at the Whitney in about two weeks, which resurrects the decades-long debate about the artist's self-identification as Cherokee, a contested position which has long been compounded by his go-to status as a native artist by non-native curators and art world insiders, raising the larger issue of the need to address the dearth of opportunities within the contemporary art field for native artists. I'd like to start with asking you a question, Jeff, and I'm going to quote you as part of the question. So in an example of what I would call insiders expecting outsiders to do their work for them, I have a quote. As an artist, I've been in New York almost 20 years, and it has been such a hindrance to have to start every studio visit with Native American art 101. At some point, I began resenting the fact that I had to be an art educator, a cultural interpreter. I'm not even qualified really to be either of these things, you know. Ultimately, it takes away from the development of the artist and the development of the work. Or as another artist in the same conversation then added, it's more like native art 101. It's like it's not native art 101. It's like indigenous people 101. You have to get them through that to even get to native art 101. Could you say a bit more about that, please? I think you said it all. Yeah, there we go. Wow. I mean, that's been my personal struggle. It's always been important to me to be at an art center, New York City. Came here just after graduate school. And at the time was totally a process-based abstract artist. And it was in discussing with people what my references were, which included everything from weavings to beading, pottery, things, dance, pow-wow materials, that suddenly people would want to hear more about that and they couldn't quite see where that would transition into the artworks that I was making. And, you know, it's frustrating. It's actually caused me to consider walking away from being an artist numerous times. And the decision to come back in 2011-12, working with beadwork, working with rawhide, working with jingles, and realizing that those things were probably as much as I had previously thought about them as simplifying the work became the more complicated materials to work with. And, but then it brings up other problems, you know, and now I work with textiles. I work with adornment. I work with things which continually are pushed to the periphery as decorative because the narratives can't be understood by non-native people or the stories can't be read in the weavings or in the beadwork patterns. And so for me as an artist, I think being a contemporary artist is the most ideal place that I could be because problematizing the situation seems to continue the practice and seems to actually instigate a more interesting dialogue that might actually, you know, at least allow, I'm going to say us, myself as a native artist and other native artists away from always referring to histories of anthropology, archaeology, and museology and allow us to actually engage in the global and American history of art, which I think doesn't require that we come to some resolution, but it allows us to kind of continue to open up potential and possibility. And so that's, that's, but I, but you know, that was the hard one thing to learn. And like I said, it was after, you know, like many artists in New York, you know, you struggle and a lot of frustration, but I think for native people and maybe for other people from working from other cultural references, that frustration is incredibly personal. You're not, you're not actually being critiqued about art. You're being critiqued about people not understanding, not being aware of your family and who you are. And then on top of that, the layer that the indigenous people of this, of this land specifically. Thank you. Kevin, you've been director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian for over a decade. In interviews, you've described your vision for the NMAI as driven by social, social justice mission. You've said at the heart of this mission is a methodology that transforms the typical institutional museum voice narrative about Native Americans to a collective voice by Native Americans. How have you accomplished this? And can you tell us a little bit about how that's manifestly different than some of the other methods you've seen? Well, sometimes we accomplish men and sometimes we don't actually. I think that is always our objective when we're working on an exhibition. But from time to time, you know, even we will slip into the being the authoritative voice. Sometimes that's appropriate. Sometimes the story doesn't belong to anyone person, anyone tribe, or even to Indians more generally. And then we're we're we confront the reality that no one speaks for all Indians. And indeed, no one, no one speaks for an entire tribe. And so there's always a challenge of trying to identify who you're going to work with, who are you going to accept as authority. I think that what I've seen happening since the establishment of the NMAI, and this was taking place certainly before I arrived, was that the traditional, the natural history museums, the anthropology museums, we have really been forced to change their methods in a very direct way because we established the NMAI in the lead, and there were other institutions that participated said you cannot work with this material. You can't interpret this material without talking to Indians. And not only that, you have to talk to the right Indians to know that you're getting correct information. And that was revolutionary at the time to say this smart guy who got a PhD in college, you know, a great many years studying a particular culture was not the authority on that culture that instead the Indians remain the primary authority on their culture. I think that the situation of the Walker sort of led me to the thought that we have made that point with the anthropology museums. I think we're still working on it with the history museums and with the art museums and with contemporary artists. Yeah, and that they're beginning to have their own experiences with these people and with this material and we can expect to see bumps in the road. Thank you. Jody Gillette, you were closely with President Obama for six years as a policy advisor, often framing language and messaging for the president in relationship to Native American issues and policies. Certainly this could be understand as perhaps the ultimate insider position. But when you when we spoke, you talked about how even the president didn't feel that he was being heard by all of the communities he was intending to be heard by and I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about that experience about what who heard those words under what context and what that meant for you. So I think that a lot of people do not know that the president hadn't met with a president hadn't met with Indian nations on a regular basis before this president and President Clinton made a couple of efforts and there were a lot of good conversations during that time and there would be small round tables on occasion, very, very occasion. So the president made a special effort in his campaign promises in 2008 to have a regular dialogue through a yearly annual conference. We called it the White House Tribal Nations Conference and so we would do we would get 15 minutes of the most the man with the biggest platform in the world. But how many people know that we had an entire press pool that follows him everywhere and they would report on everything that he did yet this never made it. So he would say we've done such good work. We've done incredible work. The biggest the best kept secret in the United States. Nobody wants to pick this up and run it even though they're they're visibly there. So part of that insider we you know I got to craft and brainstorm his speeches with brilliant speech writers but I was everything was very exact and very precise and when when it comes to speaking about Native Americans to Native Americans I realized that that's that's that's our audience and that's what we're going to do. We're going to speak to them and if other people pick it up then that's great. But the fact that there's like a there's a a core that when you talk about Native Americans when you hit that chord it sounds out of tune. It doesn't it doesn't really go with the rest of America's narrative about itself. And so people the news media I would say this is this is my own interpretation of it. The news media tends to gloss over or brush go by as quickly as possible. Our issues are really invisible and some of the some of the things that had happened to me during that time was I I also bead I'm also an artist and that I beat and I was able to go to the Met with my dress and so my Met my dress was on display at three museums and the Met was one of them and and part of what I know is that when you write or when you talk about Native Americans when you work for the President everything has to be really really good but you can see up here that the New York Times ran the the story about the exhibit and decided to take most of the suggestions of the the Met on what piece to show and how to talk about it and but they took out my name. They they deleted it and so this is the only evidence I have because I had I have like a paper copy of it. They they corrected I called them and I said you took out my name but this has been happening to Native artists Native women artists since the beginning and it's part of the part of the dehumanization that we experience in order and I think this is me finishing this we experience dehumanization in order for for people in power to feel comfortable about dispossessing us of our lands and so that's that's another live example today here now and related to that when we spoke you mentioned very specifically that you make work and you don't think of it as art for art's sake which is very different than the conversation for instance that Jeff and I had and and you said that that your motivation was to honor your grandparents so the idea of again who's being heard and the reason for continuing voices and then to have that voice silenced is is a sort of double injury and just to and I was talking backstage with with folks is that it really is why I bead is not for to show at the Met why I bead is an act of resistance because our culture was supposed to be wiped out and there are explicit policies in the United States dating all the way back to the early origins that we are we were supposed to be wiped out destroyed our culture was supposed to be no more and there are example and plenty plenty of examples laws policies but my grandmothers resisted that I resisted through beadwork I resisted through dancing I resisted in my daily life so that my kids also have that connection to not just the past but the future and this and related to that to sort of talk about the more art for art's sake aspect of this Jeff you said that you feel it's difficult or maybe to sort of go back and forth between the two you said it's difficult to critique social cultural practice but the critique is necessary for creative growth and that a law that art allows for proposals and failure without cultural offense and that's a very different driving mechanism I think for making art then then what Jodi's talking about and both of them being equally important I would imagine but from very different reasons yeah I think there's a misunderstanding on and it goes back to what I was talking about the problems with you know finding a community here in New York with artists that there needs to be a clear distinction between what cultural practices versus contemporary art making because those two things can crossover but they're not inherently linked and I think you know when I when I work with beadwork it's not at all the same kind of beadwork that Jodi's working with and I'm not pulling from the same sorts of inspirations or you know the meaning is slightly different but as an idea I do understand what Jodi is talking about and I value it but it's not necessarily a practice in my life my goal has always been to find representation actually within popular culture whether it was within music fashion art and I one of the reasons why I'm comfortable doing that and continue to choose to do that is because I think what Jodi and what Kevin have done is incredible and it's necessary for a larger context in understanding what I do. I think you know and I was saying earlier it's like when I get a message from a young let's say gay student or child or teenager on a reservation who writes to me and sees my work and they see something happening that doesn't carry with it the same kind of cultural weight of cultural survival and continued practice there's a relief for them to see themselves out in the world and I think that that's one of the mechanisms of pop culture that I like to think you know cultures can grow because they're reflected out into the world. So in a way I think we're all kind of addressing the same thing. I'm trying to build integrity and strength within my native community through the reflection in pop culture. I think it's absolutely necessary in contemporary life for that to happen. So yeah I would say that they're definitely linked but with different purposes. And I would imagine that this kind of conversation within the context of an institution like the Smithsonian is complex in relationship to showing contemporary art and I know that in institutions like this that deal with historical culture but also want to deal with contemporary practices it's very difficult to find a way to be nimble enough to do both and I wonder if you have Kevin some thoughts about how we can manage that. Well, Jody made an incredibly important point which is that Indians make people uncomfortable. Real Indians, fake Indians imaginary Indians don't. So we can all love Pocahontas and Squanto and Sacajawea because they've been rendered imaginary and what the Times and the Met did to Jody was to make her imaginary. Right, they didn't say this is a person living now who made this and instead leaves the reader to say some, you know, Pocahontas might have made that dress or somebody that looks like Pocahontas. You know, people have imaginary Indians in their head and it's not an accident. I mean you're taught that. We're all taught that. I was taught that. And so part of part of what we have to do is strangle the imaginary in favor of what's real and what is what continues to exist. And that's tough. We had a we just did a communications audit and it was instructive because what we learned is that our visitors get uncomfortable in our galleries when we're when we're talking but even in a contemporary art show. And and it finally occurred to me because we're not aggressive. I mean, we're not mean spirited if anything, but in fact, we tone it down. I mean, very actively tone it down so as so people don't want to run screaming from the building when they see when they see one of our exhibitions. But I realized that that it's not us. It's that Indians real Indians make people uncomfortable and it's because they know what Jody was talking about that the entire country was built on the dispossession and slaughter of Native Americans. And while happy Indians, imaginary Indians, friendly Indians like Squanto and Bogohannas are great and they're part of the national mythology. Real Indians are. Imaginary Indians don't have problems. They don't make demands. They don't blockate pipelines or any of that stuff. But real Indians do. And so that's my advice is, you know, depict real Indians and look to real Indians to help you do that. Well, you mentioned when we talked that you felt like your institution and your position in that institution you can take different positions and you can have a different voice than maybe some of your other Smithsonian colleagues can. And it sounds a little bit like you're talking about that here. We enjoy a very privileged place that I'm always grateful for. Get to say things that it would be very difficult for the National Museum of American History to say about American history. And yet we get to do it with all the authority of the Smithsonian. And I try to remember that always. We were born out of a social justice movement that of Native American rights, just as the African American, the history of National Museum of African American History and Culture was born out of a social justice movement. And having having, it wasn't given. It was earned by Native American activists, by African American activists and having earned that right to say what we really think we're going to use it and we're going to use it there on the National Mall and with the big Smithsonian Sunburst logo next to the things that we say. And we all know that that does carry weight. One of the things that an institution like yours does and hopefully an institution like this does is we participate in a conversation that is intended to, in this day and age, de-center a lot of what is considered normal. And one of the things that maybe needs to be considered is revising the definition of American or maybe Canadian and in that sense that it is often a synonym for whiteness. So I'm curious about how we can do that and how we can change the definition of what American is so that it looks complicated as it should and as we need it to. The definition of American has changed dramatically over time and not in the way you probably imagine. When the word, the usage of the word American first showed up in English, it was not a reference to the colonists or the Europeans who had come to the Americas. It was understood to be a reference to the native people of the Western Hemisphere. And so we're doing an exhibition that'll open in January called Americans. And in one sense it's a play on words because we want people to think about that and realize that, you know, Indians were the original Americans in a literal sense a literal language sense. Second, we want to say this is Indians doing anthropology on white people because we think that's only fair. But third, it is to get people to think about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and understand what function they have and the reason we learned them the way that we did and then say, here's the real story and we want people to walk out of there saying, I didn't know that. And we also want them to say, I wonder why I was never taught that in school. Any thoughts? Well, I just I just also think it's ironic that Native Americans are often referred to as first Americans. Yet we were the last Americans with the right to vote 1924. I'm still hung up on strangle the imaginary. That's a great set of words. Yeah, I would love to see more I mean, I think to go back to the question about insider outsider. I mean, in our original conversation, I was saying, I grew up with the idea of being an outsider is being more empowered than the insider because the insider meant that you were a consumer of the mass and to pull away from that and to kind of have some degree of independent thinking and independent action. And that's what I valued when I look at and and and think about previous Native American histories of survival. And I mean, really against all odds, you know, and I think for many of us growing up with hanging over your head that we wouldn't exist in the future. You know, it has a it has a cultural impact that you have to fight against. I mean, you have to believe that you're going to exist in the future. So I think and it's interesting thinking about I feel like NMAI has acted I think as a space of healing for the country in many ways and that people even people who identify with Native American culture who maybe are not you know, they're not Native American people I think has given them some some understanding. There's a period of the 20th century that where I feel like I mean, again, this is coming from my perspective as an artist from let's say the 40s to the 90s which is almost obsolete. And I know the handful of artists who were working and there were many artists but the the trajectory of Native American art history was not working parallel with the emerging 20th century American art history. And I think when you research it you see that there were clear decisions to keep them separate. You know that we live and we think somewhat collectively we think in a community way and even during during the time of war that we were we were related somehow to concepts of socialism of communism and things that had to be rejected and pushed down. So I think yeah, I want to I want to believe that being an outsider and kind of relinquishing the kind of censorship and standards of of being an insider can somehow make us more powerful than the insider. But you know we live in such a rapidly changing time that it has to it has to be the you know there's these windows of opportunity and they open and they close and they open and they close so yeah when they're open you just run as fast as you can and strangle as much as you can. And then you find another window. And I think to that point there's a there's a window that's open now. Yeah. And it's it's not because of Trump it's for us for my people it's because of standing rocks fight against Dakota Access Pipeline. And what what that did for us is that it brought to the present what people thought only happened in the past. It brought the justice or the lack thereof and the outright I guess just the outright taking that continues to happen to every single tribe and in the beginning the only people who were coming were other tribes and those other tribes when they would show up there would be tears there would be a lot of the solidarity was more like it still happens and for the rest of the world to know that now that's a huge opportunity and it's it's a huge opportunity for especially the culture shift that only happens through art and from the outside. Well in both you and Kevin you mentioned that you wanted to talk about some of the work that you'd seen by artists being made as a result of standing rock and what that looks like and how it gets collected and and where it's gonna sort of live and so well yeah there's there's been there has been art produced even the image on the screen now that is a mile post marker that that sort of evolved at the at the camp at Standing Rock and the the maker or the originator I guess because it was the work of many actually Facebook my wife they became friends at some point and said do you think the museum would want this? And I said oh yeah we would like to have that and so next thing I know the guy you know is pulling up at our collection center with that thing in the back of his pickup how big is it? it's about 12 feet tall mm-hmm yeah and wasn't in the best of shape as you can imagine but I mean we loved it because it's I can't think of a better thing to represent what happened at Standing Rock and actually we'll be installing this we have installed it in our exhibition about treaties between the US and an American Indian nation so we're very happy about that but the artists in general were very really were into this a lot of them went to Standing Rock a lot of them were producing art while they were at Standing Rock a guy named Shonto Begay a Navajo artist created the series of sketches and we said God we'd love to have those and he said oh they're gone and I said what do you mean? did you sell them? he said no I made them on an Etch-a-Sketch so they were literally gone we saw some work in Santa Fe at Indian Market of we saw a jar that was just amazing had a picture of a black snake that the President was writing and it was it was a beautiful oil but it had this this striking image the painters were working on it there was just a lot of art being produced around it so Standing Rock really resonated throughout Indian Country and naturally through the Native American art community as well Jodi you had said you had a that's subtle last words to Jodi right thank you very much