The style of expression may well strike you as naive, even primitive, but don’t be fooled. Beneath the crude Kodak colors lie wry paradoxes, ominous contradictions, the dense mythology of a people who believed themselves without myth. Some help, then, in deciphering. Note, first of all, that just about every one of these pictographs is an homage to one of us, the four children. We are immaculately backhanding tennis volleys. We are holding blue ribbons as we stand grinning in Speedo swimsuits. We are laughing without front teeth under First Communion veils. We are wearing scholars’ robes over surfers’ shorts as we reach for our many college diplomas. We have been told by department store photographers to stand all together just so, to radiate relaxed love, and without fail every time we have done it. We know how to make it look easy, don’t we? A tribe’s teaching, instilled early. Do you see how comfortably familiar we find the glare of sunshine, even as it seems to punish those other people, the visiting relatives from places strange and ancient with names like Rock Island, Illinois?
