"Nothing Left for Me": Federal Policy and the Photography of Milton Snow in Diné Bikéyah

Dr. Jennifer Denetdale (Diné) and Lillia McEnaney, Co-Curators; Hired by the Navajo Service in 1937, non-Native photographer Milton Snow (1905–1986) was instructed to document the federal government's supposedly well-intentioned program to address “the Navajo problem.” Over the course of twenty years, Snow produced images of Diné people, homes, and landscapes, all of which were intended to provide proof that federal technologies were in fact working to “rehabilitate” Navajo lands and lives. Instead, Snow's photographs show us radically harmed and altered communities, landscapes, and homes.