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Visitors Encounter Vision Quest’

   In its first week at the Sioux City Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, “Vision Quest: Men, Women, and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation” by Don Doll, S.J., attracted more than 9,000 visitors. The exhibit runs through August. Admission is free.

    “Vision Quest” is composed of 76 color photographs of contemporary Lakota and Dakota of the Sioux Nation who have chosen to carry traditions and culture of their people to future generations.

  The Vision Quest is a Native ceremony. It includes fasting and prayer which prepare the person to receive a vision and to discover what path his or her life should take. The Vision Quest usually takes place in an isolated area, generally without food or water. It may last up to four days. Often, a medicine man helps the person interpret his or her dreams or visions.

 Fr. Doll seeks to reach visitors not only through the photographs, but also by “giving voice” to his subjects in narratives that accompany the portraits.

  Fr. Doll is Professor of Fine Arts at Creighton University, Omaha, where he holds the Charles and Mary Heider Endowed Jesuit Chair. His work has been featured in National Geographic magazine; and a number of “Day in the Life” books, including America, California, Italy, Ireland, Passage to Vietnam, and Christmas in America.

Dakota medicine man "Joe Flying Bye, Kangi Hotanka, Crow with a Loud Voice" is among the photographs now on exhibition as part of "Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation," by Don Doll, S.J., through August at the Sioux City Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center. 

His photographs also have been published in “Crying for a Vision” (Morgan and Morgan Publishers) and “Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation” (Crown Publishers). He appears in the “Vision Quest” CD-ROM.  For more information, please go to Fr. Doll's Magis Productions.

  Fr. Doll has received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism in recognition of his work with Native people. He also has received the Nikon “World Understanding through Photography” award.

  In 2003, Fr. Doll photographed a series of landscape and panoramas of the Lewis & Clark Trail between St. Louis, Mo., and the Pacific Ocean near Ft. Clatsop. Recently, he photographed the work of Jesuits assisting Tsunami victims in India and Sri Lanka, and the educational work of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Uganda and Southern Sudan.

  “Vision Quest” is the result of Fr. Doll’s love of portrait photography combined with his long-standing relationship with the Sioux. A Milwaukee, Wis., native, he first encountered the Sioux reservation communities as a young Jesuit priest when he was assigned to St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Reservation from 1962 to 1965. During that time he began working with a camera. He studied photojournalism at Marquette University, Milwaukee.

    The Sioux City Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, exit 149 off I-29, is a private, non-profit institution built and sustained by Missouri River Historical Development, Inc. (MRHD) and dedicated to “Commemorating a history of encounters.” Admission, all programs, exhibits and activities are free and open to all people. For more information call 712-224-5242 or www.siouxcitylcic.com.

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