Why did some Native American people reenact older customs and ceremonies for Edward S. Curtis’s camera?

Native American people reenacted older customs and ceremonies for Edward S. Curtis’s camera because he was seeking to create a documentary record of ways of life that he believed were dying out. Curtis aimed to capture what he described as the "soul of the people," and he often encouraged his subjects to reconstruct traditions that were no longer practiced in their daily lives.1

While these reenactments served to preserve ethnographic information for his project, The North American Indian, the process was not without negative consequences. Curtis himself acknowledged that these reenactments sometimes caused internal conflict, noting that among the Navajo, the practice "broke down" traditional beliefs and created divisiveness within the community.1

Ultimately, these images were shaped by the aesthetic and ideological goals of the dominant culture of the time, which often viewed Native Americans as a "vanishing race" incapable of dynamic change. While the photographs are frequently recognized for their dignity and beauty, they represent a complex, staged collaboration rather than a purely unmediated record of contemporary Native American life.123