That continuity — the community’s continuity, the land’s continuity, the persistence of the Akimel O’odham through everything that was done to them and everything that happened around them — is the larger story within which Ira Hayes’s individual story lives.

It is the context that makes his life legible.

It is what the photograph, for all its enduring power, was never quite able to show.

The man in the photograph was from somewhere specific and someone specific.

He was Akimel O’odham.

He was from the Gila River.

He was Ira Hayes.

And the people he came from are still here.