He died on the Gila River land.

He is buried at Arlington.

The burial at Arlington was an honor, and it was also a continuation of the process by which the country incorporated Ira Hayes into its national narrative — making him part of the landscape of federal power and national memory rather than leaving him in the desert landscape that had shaped him.

It was the right of his family to decide where he was buried, and the records suggest they accepted the Arlington burial, which was offered and arranged by the government and the Marine Corps.

Whether they had full freedom to choose otherwise, given the public pressure and institutional expectations surrounding a figure of Hayes’s public significance, is harder to say.