For over fifty years I have photographed among Native Americans beginning with the Lakotas on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. In the 1970's I published a book and exhibit entitled "Crying for a Vision." In the 1980's I lived among the Yupik Eskimos along the Bering Sea, and the Athapaskans along the Yukon where I produced black and white essays for the National Geographic. The Vision Quest book, exhibit and CD-ROM were published in the 1990's. I was honored with the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for the years of work among Native Americans. I continue to work producing calendars for Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation and St. Augustine Indian School on the Winnebago Reservation.  

It was on the Rosebud Reservation as young Jesuit teaching at St. Francis Indian School, that I first picked up a camera.

In a one week period, I photographed the most profound and natural cycles of life; the birth of Tad and the death of my mother in a hospice. The Dickel family had asked what I thought of photographing the birth of their second child as they didn't have photographs of their first born. A Creighton chaplain lent me a pager [before cell phones]. My father appreciated being able to contact me as my mother had just entered one of the first Wisconsin hospices. On Thursday morning early I photographed the birth of Tad before going to Milwaukee to be with my family for my mother's final week of life in hospice. The title "Go in Peace" originated when after praying the Our Father and saying Psalm 23 together, my younger sister leaned over and hugged mother saying, "Go in Peace." I thought 'Oh, my God, how good!" and invited my father and sister to do the same. We were so relieved that we as a family commissioned her to leave us that we ordered in pastrami sandwiches and a six-pack.

These are images from various trips and assignments around the world. Often photographers make photographs that do not pertain to the original assignment. One of my first trips abroad was to Belize invited my classmates where I photographed for the Jesuit school and mission. I discovered that if I were with the trusted Jesuits, I too was accepted and trusted and could make photographs.

The photographs made in Belize remain some of my favorites - in which I worked simply and straight forwardly with my Leica. For my first project among Native Americans, Crying for a Vision, I returned to the methods I learned in Belize.  

 

This project began with Alan Klem, a Creighton theater faculty member's request to photograph along the Lewis and Clark trail to obtain images for an original production he was writing featuring York, Clark's slave, as the narrator.  It was produced in the Fall of 2003 in Creighton's Lied Center theater. 

Three trips were made to gather the photographs: 1) from Wood River to Omaha along the Missouri River. 2) In the summer of 2002, I canoed and photographed the White Cliff area along the Missouri River below Great Falls, Montana where the Missouri is pristine - as Lewis and Clark saw it. 3) During the summer of 2003, I drove from Omaha to the Pacific Ocean following the trail as described by Stephen Ambrose in Undaunted Courage. 

For years I've photographed Native American children in their dance outfits for a fund-raising calendar for Jesuit-run Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The calendars are sent out as a direct mail fund raiser each year. From their website: "The mission of Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic institution administered by the Jesuits and the Lakota people, is to develop and grow as a vibrant Church, through an education of the mind and spirit that promotes Lakota and Catholic values.

Red Cloud was founded as Holy Rosary Mission in 1888 by the Jesuits at the request of Chief Red Cloud, a leader of the Oglala Sioux Indians residing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation."

St. Augustine Indian Mission in Winnebago, Nebraska, is a small Catholic grade school on the Winnebago Indian Reservation in Northeastern Nebraska about 25 miles southwest of Sioux City, Iowa and 90 miles north of Omaha. St. Augustine's was founded by St. Katharine Drexel in 1909 to serve the children of the Omaha and Winnebago Reservations.  My good friend, Fr. David Korth, has been serving St. Augustine's Indian Mission since 2003.

The calendar designed by Pat Osborne, a graphic designer at Mutual of Omaha, has won numerous awards not only for it's design but for print quality.  Three times, the St. Augustine won best non-profit calendar in America - for the 2008, 2011 calendars and now the 2012 calendar.