Digital Gallery

Three Native men dressed in traditional to contemporary attire stand around a tombstone while a line of people walk toward a buffalo skull. The skull symbolizes the 19th-century demise of the buffalo—an emblem of Great Plains Native culture—and also references the “Vanishing Indian” theory, a widely held notion among Americans that Native peoples, like the buffalo, were dying out. Although public health campaigns for Native audiences did not often address gay men explicitly, it is likely that health workers recognized their increased risk of being infected with AIDS. In response, posters like this one focused on Native males and their traditional roles as warriors and providers as a way of reaching men in the community.

• Digital Collection