This article explores the importance of a unique and rich collection of photographs of Ho-Chunk people taken between 1879 and 1942 by Black River Falls, Wisconsin, photographer Charles Van Schaick. Unlike the collections of Edward Curtis who sought to capture images of a “vanishing race” for ethnographic or commercial purposes, these were photographs that Ho-Chunk families themselves commissioned for their own personal use, and for the most part, controlled how these images were circulated. Today these images are powerful representations of Ho-Chunk tribal and family history, and reflect a heritage of resilience. The stories the images convey of the importance of family, place, ongoing colonialism, and survivance are the central themes of the Ho-Chunk experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Attention to how we begin to theorize the diversity of Indigenous peoples’ affective responses to these historic images will also be explored through an analysis of my own engagement with family images in the visual archive.

Historical photographs of Australian Aboriginal people were amassed during the colonial period for a range of purposes, yet rarely to further an Indigenous agenda. Today, however, such images have been recontextualized, used to reconstruct family history, document culture, and express connections to place. They have become a significant heritage resource for relatives and descendants. Images stand in for relatives lost through processes of official assimilation—or as this sad history is now known in Australia, the Stolen Generations. This article explores the potential healing power of the photos in addressing loss and dislocation, and emerging tools for supporting this process through reviewing the Returning Photos project outcomes.