Early in my career as a curator of contemporary native art and photography,

I spent a lot of time looking at archival photographs of native people, held captive in forts,

or posed in portrait studios for postcards or photographs when

native people would go to Washington, D.C. to negotiate treaties.

And some of those photographs, I think the one that sits with me the longest,

is a photo of a man who's waiting his execution at Fort Snelling.

And he looks so pensive.

He was going to be executed for stealing cows for his starving family.

This was a time when some native people were put on reservations, smaller lands,

but then non-Indians kept encroaching on those lands.

Our crooked administrators were taking a cut of the food that was supposed to go to native families, so they were starving.

And so the families were forced to steal livestock.

He stays with me because I think about he was at the juncture of his death.

It was just a matter of days before he was hung.

I would have to think he's thinking about what is happening to this world, what is happening to my children?

What will my grandchildren know?

So I think about that is his death all for not.

And the treaties that were made, the negotiations that were made, were they all for not.

It must have been so beautiful before these people kicked us out.

We used to be full of the devil.

We'd throw the chickens in the bay and we rode all the calves as they could, we could find.

I just tromped all over them hills. I knew every rabbit hole and everything else that was out there.

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