Hayes was navigating this period — the early years of termination policy, the relocation programs, the shifting federal approach — while also dealing with everything else that was happening in his life.

He was not a political leader or an activist.

He was a farmer’s son from Arizona who had gone to war and come back carrying more than he had left with.

But the political context shaped the conditions of his life as surely as the photograph shaped its public image.

He was not able to separate himself from either.

What His Community Remembers

The Gila River Indian Community has its own relationship to Ira Hayes that is distinct from the national memory centered on the photograph and the bond tour and the Arlington burial.