My name is Jenny Tone Pah-Hote. I teach at UNC Chapel Hill. I am an associate professor of American studies. I teach classes in American Indian History and Visual and Expressive Culture. I am a citizen of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and I live in Chapel Hill. I saw the exhibition for the first time couple of weeks ago, and I was impressed with the breadth of the exhibition. I was also just really taken aback by the fantastic works in the museum. I saw works like Oscar HoweÕs Dance of the Heyoka that IÕve taught about. I've taught about both his incredible abstract painting, but also the way and handful of artists of his era really pushed modernism. I don't mean like Òeverybody should do modernism,Ó I mean they brought modernism in the conversation around American Indian art in really fabulous ways. The wonderful thing about Oscar Howe is that he came to understand his own modernism as being a product of Dakota philosophy and thought, which is wonderful for thinking about an artist working in 1950s, 1960s. At that time, he was saying Dakota philosophy and ideas and story is complex and significant enough that I can make these wonderful works of art with thinking of this as the intellectual and philosophical base. ItÕs one of my favorite pieces in the exhibition but whatÕs wonderful about the exhibition is that is the start of the conversation. That is not somewhere in the middle, that is not somewhere at the end. We have to talk about pre-Oscar Howe manifesto to get why that was such a critical juncture. Oscar Howe, he is Yanktonai Dakota, from Upper West, he earns a Masters of Art from University of Oklahoma, and he trains in a style of art that was primarily two-dimensional. It often represented culturally significant and culturally grounded scenes. Lots of dance, lots of images from the 19th century, and he starts moving away from this, to create more abstract work. At that time, during the 1940s and 50s, we began to see the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma hosting an art show. It's called the Philbrook Annual and it ran from 1946 to late 1970s. Prior to his manifesto, he sends his work to the Philbrook Annual, and has positive feedback. One year, he is told that his work is "not Indian enough" and Oscar Howe sends, and this is every historianÕs dream, a scathing letter to the Philbrook Museum. ÒAre we going to let these tastemakers of the art market determine what Native art looks like?Ó He basically says we shouldnÕt let other people determine what our art is going to be like. We need to be in charge of our own art. We need to determine what the parameters are. He thought that Native people shouldn't be held back to a certain standard of what previous artists had done. This is the manifesto. This becomes the beginning of a long conversation around innovation in Native art, around the incorporation of certainly modernist abstract imagery, but also thinking about more broadly with T.C. Cannon's work, Pop imagery of contemporary art as a sight of commentary upon this state of affairs, not only in Native America but beyond the world. It's the beginning, it's really like he opened this door that took the conversation in a different direction, not only the conversation among art historian but among artists, too. When we think about the way the art unfolds in Art for a New Understanding, what we see is works in different media, we see the incorporation of Marie Watt's sculptural work in fabric, we see Shan GoshornÕs basketry. What we see there is the enfolding of a larger conversation of Native American art. Partially because when Oscar Howe was coming up as an artist in the 40s, it was the first time that there was this major exhibition of American Indian art in MoMA, and 1939-40 was the first time Native objects were displayed and discussed as art. What Art for a New Understanding does is that it also emphasizes the importance of art across media. I am thinking bit of ShanÕs baskets in the exhibition, created from paper and hand-tinted photography, Marie Watt's work and also Anita FieldsÕ work, so we see a broader perspective about media and what kinds of objects are considered art. That is one of the things I really appreciate about the exhibition, is that this exhibition looks at a broad scope of objects, not simply paintings, too.