Hey everyone I got a bit of a bonus video for you today before I get into it Obviously you can enter our Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition giveaway Just like the video comment down below subscribe hit that bell icon, but let's get into the nitty-gritty here We're talking about Unreal Engine 5 and we're talking about PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and I want to React to this. I've already seen it a couple times and it's absolutely incredible We also have some additional information that has come out after the fact about this tech demo There was a Q&A section and all that stuff that Jeff Keely did with the developers and all the stuff at Epic Games that created this demo because this is a tech demo now This is being confused as being a PlayStation 5 Tech demo I've seen some reactions out there won't you know call anyone out specifically But I've seen some reactions out there that are that are misrepresenting what this is This is not a PlayStation 5 tech demo It is a tech demo of a new engine that is running on PlayStation 5 So what this is is a tech demo of Unreal Engine 5 Running on a PlayStation 5 it does not mean this tech demo cannot run on an Xbox Series X or a PC This is just showing some of the capabilities of the engine now We see all the time it reveals of of Engines of what it's Unreal Engine or whatever the case might be Unreal Engine is one of the most popular ones out there Where there was the original you know two three four now five They're always have really really impressive looking things and the actual games We end up getting on those engines don't always live up to the initial tech demo of That but I think the idea of this demo and it you know running on a PlayStation 5 The point of the demo was to show that this is gonna be more close to what you can actually create in Unreal Engine 5 So I'm just gonna play this demo in the background I kind of talk about things as as it's happening and things I talk about things that I want to highlight and I Guess the one of the biggest things I suppose this engine's doing and again This was always gonna be possible on better hardware with better engines because engine development is more important than power You can throw all the power in the world But the engines aren't more advanced that power is not gonna matter and a big thing you've seen here is more photo realistic environments you're seeing Environments here that are kind of what you know They describe as what you would see in a movie if a movie was putting You know like like say the Avengers movies or something those Marvel movies where a lot of stuff's happening on green screen A lot of the stuff you will see in that green screen if it's not actual footage of places It will be actual captures of places that have been put into a computer and rendered out in this fashion to make it look More photo realistic essentially This is the kind of stuff you would see from movies not traditionally video games especially in the rock formations and it's because there's billions and billions of triangles that they have been able to Condense down to millions of triangles I think they said 16 plus billion or whatever and they condense it down to 20 million triangles and the triangles that are like the Size of what used to be an individual pixel which is where you're getting all this high-quality fidelity from And the big thing with this engine is they essentially created a new lumen engine for lighting which is just more realistic lighting notice We're not talking about ray tracing. We're not talking about anything You know crazy here We're talking about this specific engine has its own lighting and you're just seeing them kind of turn the lights off And they're gonna move you know, this is what when they turn the light off That's without lumen This is with lumen on they can move the light source around everything's really dynamic and you're gonna see that throughout this demo That's a huge thing that they feature And beyond that is obviously their ability to compress billions of pixels or billions of triangles into millions And make it something that is Inperceivable to us as humans as people, you know, we have The uncanny valley effect basically where things become so realistic That you can't tell the difference between real life and the game now I can still tell this is a video game. Not everything in it. I would say is To that that level of photo realism Mostly because I feel like you know, there was so much focus on the environment so much focus on say her clothing You know, they talked about that cloth at one point because they introduced a new physics engine That the character model itself I think you know, it's kind of a giveaway that it's still a video game There was less focus on the character model more focus on the environment You know I mentioned these bats are being done with a new technology as well a new rendering technology and What I what I'm seeing here is maybe the most impressive thing we've seen are the next gen We've had some gameplay reveals for Xbox series X which didn't feel like actual gameplay a lot of it was like cinematics And even then some of it's like current gen stuff That's just like, you know best played on Xbox series X not made specifically for a next gen system And obviously from Sony side, we've seen pretty much nothing This would be the first thing and a lot of people popping this up as man This is an impressive debut for PlayStation 5 and it's definitely a really impressive thing shown running on PlayStation 5 Well, that's not kid ourselves. This is gonna run on the Xbox series X The Xbox series X is from all developers that the saving it. It's a little bit more powerful than the PlayStation 5 They do talk throughout this video and throughout the interview that the PlayStation 5 was easy to work with in development of this demo and in development of You know their engine But this engine is clearly gonna run on Xbox series X and PC and it's probably just as easy to develop on those platforms as well We need to remember PlayStation is not using some secret sauce here. It's using PC architecture. So is the Xbox series X so our PCs So whatever you're doing on PlayStation front, that's so easy. It's equally easy This is obviously just more of a Sony paid for this Sony paid for this debut of this demo to be exclusive on PlayStation instead of them saying we're gonna here's what it can do on a PC Here's a new an Xbox. They're just Sony paid money They threw a paycheck out there to get this demo to to kind of be there their reveal of gameplay on the system Now this demo is just a demo. It's never gonna become a full-fledged game But I think what's really important here is seeing like how the bugs are reacting to the light You know that that's just something we haven't really seen in games too often Especially at that that number of bugs and beetles And you're gonna later see her like fly through the air and just how crazy this is and some people are like man This must be rendering in 4k and 8k and while this video the feed that I'm playing for you guys You guys are getting this in 1080p But the video that I'm actually playing and I'll link it down in the below is you know in 4k on YouTube with YouTube compression This demo is not actually running in 4k. This needs to be stated because some people think that like everything You're seeing in this demo is crazy, and it must be 4k or 8k. It's not It's 1440p the game is running in 1440p and then being upscaled to 4k And that's a good thing. I want to put this out there as a gamer It is a good thing that this is in 1440p because 1440p is the sweet spot a lot of people view Resolution as the be all end all of debates is it true 4k is it checkerboard 4k? 4k is not the fight for next-gen the fight for next-gen needs to be about creating In this specific art style anyways more photo realistic things better AI Better interactions with environments and lighting the the fight needs to be to take what we can already do with games And just make it all infinitely better not just resolution And so I think that's what's exciting here is this is running at 1440p. It's probably 30 fps I can't I can't tell by looking at it if it's if it's 30 or 60 But I feel like there was a moment when she like put her hand on the door and moved in that it looked like there was a little stutter So I'm guessing it's 30 fps, you know, maybe not locked 30, but And that's fine like this isn't a real game. This isn't something we're gonna get to play Developers might get this demo packaged in with them, but it's not a real game It's not something that us as consumers are really gonna be messing with and be able to play Unless unreal engine 5 ends up being free and then we can do whatever But that probably won't be the case at first in fact They announced at the end of the video that this engine is not available till 2021 Obviously developers have the engine just there won't be any games coming out made an unreal engine 5 until next year And obviously we assume, you know epic owns unreal engines So we assume that they're going to do things like introduce it in the fortnight and all that eventually And see what what difference is it can make in that game, which isn't necessarily a photo realistic game Now this is the scene I was talking about where she's flying to there and everything just looks absolutely incredible The destruction of the environment They talked about how sound, you know, that they've Improved on sound where you can hear sound from different areas and I know Sony emphasized that as well But again, it's not a PlayStation exclusive thing. It's an engine. This is an engine demo I think that's one of the biggest messages I wanted to get across and no folks This is likely never going to run on a Nintendo switch. I'm not saying it won't be scalable I'm not saying we suddenly won't see Unreal Engine 5 games appear on a PlayStation 4 Pro or an Xbox series X That's entirely possible. I just don't think that as consumers we should expect this to be on a Nintendo switch But that's just my my two cents on that You're just seeing the logo unveil here for Unreal Engine 5 at the end What kind of backup of it so you guys can see a little bit more of that gameplay And I I honestly think that this is a really good thing for the industry Because this is where you're gonna start seeing You know the difference between current gen and next gen a lot of what you're seeing in this demo has never been done in current gen Because it can't be the amount of rocks falling the this level of detail This is where you see that next-generation leap and is it as impressive as going from standard deaf to HD? No, nothing's ever gonna be as impressive as going from a 360p slash 480p jumping up to 720 and 1080 It's not gonna be that impressive, but it doesn't matter. This is still impressive on the surface. This is next-gen This is the stuff that we could talk about how switch can't do this, right? You know we talked about how a lot of games made in current engines that are out there can still come to switch Like Witcher 3 but if Witcher 4 or whatever is being made in the future is made on this Yeah, we're not getting that on switch and that's where Nintendo will need to advance in technology Again, this engine is going to be scalable. Unreal Engine 4 was scalable all the way down to phones This engine will be scalable as well probably all the way down to phones too So it's not something that's not possible in a future switch or a switch pro or you know a switch 2 definitely could have newer Technology that could run not necessarily maybe at this fidelity, but could run something similar But yeah, I think this is exciting. This is What as gamers we should be more excited about than the tech specs We always focus on the specs of the system Xbox series X is more powerful more terror flops more this than the PlayStation 5 PlayStation 5 might have a faster SSD although them sure the Xbox ones pretty comparable I think that in the end The engines are really where you see a lot of the technological advances being taken advantage of I don't think there's anything in here that PlayStation 5 is doing that Xbox series X can't do or that a PC can't do I think this is mostly just an amazing look at what a next-gen gaming engine can do and Unreal Engine Is trying its best to make make creating photo realistic environments like this more easy to do even than it is to do for say Movies which invests, you know millions and millions of millions of dollars and they're trying to get a look like this With green screens and all that and doing it in the game needs to be a little bit easier because it's hard to import You know 20 billion pixels, you know when they show that statue at one point They said that statue alone was 16 billion or 20 billion triangles And then obviously they condensed that down and they had that room with a whole bunch of those statues I just think this is a great look at the future. I don't think there's anything to be concerned about You know at this point with this demo this demo is practically perfect the way it is for what it is it is at a look at Unreal Engine 5 running on next-gen hardware and This is the most next-gen of next-gen things we have seen and I think that's just really really cool Obviously, it's a good look for Sony because a lot of people are thinking, you know Well, this is the first look at gameplay on a PlayStation. I can't it's a tech demo tech demo not real gameplay tech demo But yeah, it's it's impressive. I got it I got to give Epic and Unreal Engine 5 a lot of a lot of credit here Like that's the statue I was talking about with all those pixels. This is a this is a great look at What a photorealistic? Graphic style is gonna look like next-gen in the games that get off of the older engines onto the newer engines Not that you can't get some good stuff out of the older engines But it's these new engines that are gonna show the true power of next-gen technology So I'm pretty a next-gen technology. It's current technology folks. It's current technology But it's it's it's done in a better way So PC gamers should be thrilled to see this Xbox gamers should be thrilled to see this Sony gamers should be thrilled to see this even Nintendo gamers You know this isn't necessarily something you mean you're not seeing this on a switch But we can be interested in what the future of Nintendo might hold as these engines might become more and more possible to be on There this also, you know kind of sets the bar, you know What's next for EA after the frostbite engine because the frostbite engine can't do this So what's next for them? What's next for Ubisoft? You know, they still don't even have their their engine that they their newer engine running on every single franchise And now here we have Unreal Engine 5 so maybe like hey look at the new tech You know, what are you gonna do about that?  You know, we've never had SSDs native in these systems before so are we gonna take advantage of that? It's just incredible. I'm excited for next-gen. I know I'm a Nintendo guy. This is Nintendo Prime I am Nate from Nintendo Prime, but I love all of gaming and I can't wait to get a PlayStation 5 get an Xbox Series X I have a gaming capable PC already that I game on. I can't wait to experience, you know true next-gen experiences Which are gonna feel Like 2021 is the earliest we're gonna get something With a next-gen engine probably realistically 2022 2023 when games are fully developed using just those engines I think Unreal Engine 4 is gonna stick around for a while because it's also an incredible engine. It's just not this I mean Yeah, what is there to say? They did an incredible job on this demo. So Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am the thinner over just from the center prime Let me know your thoughts at Unreal Engine 5 PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X next gen Is this finally what you guys needed to see to know what is possible? With these new systems that you cannot do with prior systems at least once these new engines come out Is this what you needed to see? Are you disappointed? It's not true 4k Does that matter to you that it's not true 4k that it's just upscaled? Personally, I think there's a lot more of the goals in the visual presentation than resolution So it doesn't bother me. I don't watch my movies in 4k generally So I'm okay. Even if the room 40 40p upscaled. I wouldn't really care 1440p to me is a sweet spot between visuals and resolution and All that I think most of next-gen games should target 1440p in my opinion Thank you guys so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video


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.  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.  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.  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


Informed consent is such an important tool in research for the social scientists that we refer back towards its nitty-gritties again and again. And form consent is one of the founding principle of research ethics because, it is given here we actually, in any research, formally or informally enter, it is an intent that the participant can enter research freely with full information about his risk and benefits and they give consent before they enter into research. So, now looking at the different stages of informed consent, we all know that informed consent is between two parties where one is informing about the status of the research and other one is committing that yes, he or she would be the part of that research. But here comes different stages as well. There is a process that began with recruitment and screening of participants like our sampling criteria either they are fulfilling or not, either they are going to be the potential participants or not and continues throughout the participants' involvement in the research. Once they have been identified as the potential participants, after that, their continuity will continue throughout the research in our data collection phase. It includes providing specific information about study to participants in a comprehensible manner. So, whatever would be the study plan, either it is a black and white paper pencil test, it is going to be some interview, it is going to be some focus group technique, it is going to be probably a detailed interview, so whatever it is we have to explain the procedure, we have to explain the process through which the participants might have to go through. So, we are getting questions to explain research and role of participants in it. Ketna time lagega, participant ka exactly uskin the role kya hoga, what he or she is supposed to do in that, that should be given in a very brief and concise manner into informed consent. Then giving adequate time to participants to consider their decisions, like when we give informed consent to someone, it is ethically very much appropriate that you give some time to the participants to think about it, that either they are going to be the part of that research happily or not, aur agar unke kuch reservations se, we can communicate over them aur pere unne resolve kane ke baad unse consent sign-sign kar wakar unko hum apni research ke protocols desh sakte hain. And by protocol I mean, whatever the type of the questionnaires you are going to use for your research, our effort back as protocols including your demographic information. Can obtain voluntary agreement by the participants to take part in the study and can decline the answer specific questions or withdraw at any time. So, you know, we have to give them that opportunity to the participants that if they want to question anything during the process and if they want to withdraw that whole exercise, they are free to do that. However, we can politely tell them, ke agar aap isko bheesh me chode nenge, to usse humari research ko potentially kya nukhsaan ho sakta hain, to usse bachne ke liye aap pehle se ye decide karne. Answering questions to explain research and role of the participant in it, this is very much important because from top to bottom at all stages you are obliged to give answers to the participants. Then informed consent procedures. Some consent procedures involve informing respondents either orally or in writing as well as getting their oral or written consent. So, in some situation where we see that we are going to do a convenient sampling, probably the researcher is standing outside the gate of the Pepsi challenge context and people are coming and going inside and you are just going to ask about the attitude of the people about drinking a certain cola. So here, it's not important that you are going to get the written informed consent. You can just orally ask them that what is your opinion about that certain thing, so are you okay to give answer for that, so the oral consent would be fine enough in that situation. Depending on the type of the research, different ways of obtaining informed consent are possible as I just mentioned. In what situations written informed consent is important? It is used when reading and signing forms is not problematic, it's a proper protocol of a research. The research is complex and it has to be gone through multiple stages and first access to the research participants is by providing writing information. So, where protocols are high, research complex and written informed consent is also important.  There are a lot of people who are not literate, who cannot read your written informed consent form, you can read and tell them and you can get oral consent. Then there are cultural and political concerns with signing the contract like documents. You know, there are the different geopolitical situations going on and in that, we are trying to take an opinion from the people of Kashmir, that if Indian forces come into their territory, how do they feel? And we also tell them to write in writing, so they may not be comfortable enough to give you that document in writing. There we can ask people's opinions and attitudes of oral consent. Then time for consent is limited, for example, a charge interaction between researcher and participant is limited. Like if there is any happening in a situation where we cannot ask them, let's say we have a traumatic event, a natural disaster and researchers and teams go there and the victims ask them questions, collect data from them. Oral consent can only be taken there. In that situation, we cannot enter a written bond. So basically it seems to be a very simple thing, but it seems to be a technical side by side because we have to see that in what situations we are going to opt for the written consent and in what situations we are going to go for the oral consent.