In a 2007 show at the Hallie Ford Museum called The Spider and the Bureau, Bailey presented 8 large (6′ X 5′) works that examine the legacy the Bureau of Indian Affairs has had on native people and their communities. In those oil paintings and mixed media pieces, known collectively as “The Blanket Series,” Bailey wove Navajo Chief Blankets and other traditional Indian design elements with images used by bureaucrats such as documents, maps and propaganda photographs to tell stories of forced assimilation and government violence.

In the years that followed, Bailey continued to tell the story of the Spider and the Bureau with four additional works, each of which look more specifically at elements of contemporary native life and his own experience as a teacher at Chemawa Indian School, the federal boarding school at which he taught art for 40 years.