Hayes was part of the generation that experienced this policy shift, which represented yet another form of the federal government changing the terms of its relationship with Native people without adequate consultation or consent.

He moved to Chicago for periods but returned repeatedly to the Gila River reservation — not because the reservation offered better opportunities, but because it was home in a way that Chicago could not be.

The arrests for public intoxication that marked this period were real, and they were also public in a way that arrests of a non-famous person would not have been.

Newspapers covered Hayes’s arrests because he was newsworthy — because the juxtaposition of the war hero from the famous photograph and the man being picked up for public drunkenness was a story that sold papers.