As a young child on the Hoopa Valley Reservation, artist Don Bailey drew from landscape and the stories of his ancestors as told to him by elders. When his family moved off the reservation and he first attended the white man’s school, he began to hear stories others tell about Native People. In the years that followed, he was drawn to new and varied stories: stories sung by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Gil Scott Heron; stories told by Native activists; and stories painted by T. C. Canon, Paul Gaugin, Vincent van Gogh, and Larry Rivers.

Each of Don's paintings tells its own story of aspects of Native life, where the past is always present.