As the sun sets over the Collegiate Peaks in central Colorado, John Edward Graybill blacks out the windows of his kitchen, which doubles as his studio. A single beam of sunlight—or even moonlight—could threaten the sensitive alchemy that will lure an image from his exposed dry plate glass negative. A clock on the wall counts down the seconds to reveal the moment he captured when he peered out at me from under the black cloth of his 19th-century camera. Through the viewfinder, he saw my world upside down and mirrored from reality—a perspective from which his great-grandfather, ethnographer Edward Curtis, had seen my ancestors.

My name is Shawnee Real Bird, and I am Apsáalooke (Crow). Five years ago, I held a first-edition Edward Curtis portfolio in my hands for the first time. Curtis’ life’s work revolved around preserving his outsider view of lifestyles that existed before the United States of America did—before we were ever called “Indians.”

He spent the first three decades of the 20th century photographing more than 80 tribes across the continent, including mine. The published result, The North American Indian, is a 20-volume set that captures a pivotal time in Native American history. Curtis recorded my Apsáalooke people in 1908, as they began their transition from nomadic freedom on the plains to isolation on reservations.

Among the thousands of sepia-toned images Curtis took is one of my great-great-grandfather, Richard Wallace, known to our people as Eyes Taken Out, as well as one of his brother, John. Today these visual remembrances aid the oral histories of my people. Born in 1998, I am part of a generation of Native Americans who know the stories of life on the plains but whose upbringings reflect reservation life. For us, The North American Indian has become a sort of Rosetta stone, helping us connect our ancestral memories with our modern lives.

In the spirit of his great-grandfather, whom the Northern Plains people affectionately referred to as Shadow Catcher, Graybill and his wife, Coleen, are working to capture shadows of today’s realities. Their “Descendants Project” aims to amplify the voices of Native Peoples whose ancestors were photographed by Curtis.

I am one of those descendants.

Five generations after Curtis’ visit to the Northern Plains Tribes, Graybill journeyed to the Crow Reservation to capture my story on a dry plate glass negative. I chose to bring him to the Wolf Teeth Mountains, where my mother rode horses with me in her belly and where I now chase wild horses on foot. It is also the only place I’ve ever seen my dad, a lifelong Indian-Cowboy, connect to himself, and only then on the back of a horse. It’s a place his ancestral DNA understands better than anywhere else. Among the sagebrush, my father and the horse become one spirit.

I began riding horses with my parents when I was 3. It was then that I witnessed my dad’s ability to create a connection to our First Maker and integrate that spiritual relationship into his modern existence. As a young person, I wondered what I would connect with that could become a portal to the old way of life I longed for.

Growing up on the reservation, I heard oral histories from my elders and often questioned where I belonged. Those who existed before me thrived in the harsh mountains of Montana. They survived wars with enemy tribes, followed by genocide and boarding schools, then reservation life, always striving to preserve what makes our Apsáalooke hearts strong.

In today’s fast-paced world, filled with isolating technologies, the way of life that my Apsáalooke elders taught me felt out of place. It wasn’t until I learned to fly that I was able to merge my modern identity with my ancestral roots. In 2019, I became the first Apsáalooke airplane pilot. In the cockpit of a Cessna 172, I find solace with the sky beings who populate my tribal histories. When the plane’s altimeter reads 10,000 feet—the same altitude at which my Apsáalooke people once sought visions atop mountains—I honor the ability to connect, to have finally found my place among the clouds.

As Graybill sets up the vintage camera, I close my eyes (for all great things are felt most fully with your eyes closed). I am full of adrenaline, surrounded by 15 wild horses from the herd of my grandfather, Timber Leader. I know the feeling well. It bounces between the palms of my hands and gathers as sweat along my lips. I trust the horses with the entirety of my being. I take a deep breath and imagine my light expanding beyond me. All the generations of cowboys and medicine women that make up my “blood quantum” stand behind me. I put my spirit in that moment to be captured by exposure and alchemy.

From behind the camera I hear Graybill say, “Got it,” and we all breathe again. The feeling from my hands disappears. It now lives within that dry plate image. More than 100 years separate my image from those captured by Curtis. Looking at my photograph next to those of my ancestors, I am unrecognizable to them, and one day I will be unrecognizable to the generations that follow. Only the contents of our hearts will reveal our creation stories to be the same.