Returning Home

One of Edward Curtis’s famous Native American photos shows a line of Navaho Indians on horses fading off into the distance. It was entitled, brilliantly, ‘Vanishing Race’ Not only were the individual riders moving towards the vanishing point in the photo but that their whole way of life was vanishing too. Their ‘home’, like that of most Native Americans, had been displaced, to a small reservation, detached from the broad natural canvas of their world.