“Word Sender” was the name given to
Neihardt by the Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk. It describes someone whose
words spread far and wide to bring good words of knowledge and inspiration.
Previous recipients include Robin and Hilda Neihardt, Ron Hull of Nebraska
Public Television, former Gov. And Mrs. Charles Thone, teacher Joe Green,
folklorist Roger Welsch, Nebraska poets Bill Kloefkorn and Ted Kooser, college
president Mryv Christopherson and his wife Anne, writer Joe Starita, and the early
founding Neihardt Board members..
This years recipient is Father Don Doll.
Don Doll is a Jesuit priest and a photographer. Since 1969 Doll
has lived and worked at Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is a
professor of Journalism holding the Charles and Mary Heider Jesuit Chair.
As a photographer, his work has been featured in National Geographic and a number of the Day in the Life of… books. He was
introduced to both photography and to the Lakota people when he was assigned to
the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota as a young Jesuit. Two of his books on
Native Americans are: Crying for a Vision
and Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of
the Sioux Nation. The Vision
Quest Exhibit has opened in 20 cities.
A recent project, “The Jesuits” has taken him around the world.
One of his stories from this project,
“Finding Ernesto” aired in November 1999, on ABC’s Nightline with Ted
Koppel. In 2003 he completed a series of landscape and panorama photographs of
the Lewis and Clark trail between St. Louis, Missouri, and the Pacific Ocean
near Ft. Clatsop.
Father Doll has photographed Jesuits assisting Tsunami victims
in India and Sri Lanka, and the work of Jesuit Refugee Service in Uganda,
Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, the Congo, the Darfur border in Eastern Chad, in
Thailand, Indonesia,and East Timor. Most recently he photographed for Jesuit
Refugee Service working with Iraqi refugees in Ankara Turkey, Aleppo and Damascus
Syria, and Amman, Jordan.
Fr. Doll received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in
Photojournalism for his many years of work with Native Americans. He also
received the 2006 Nebraska Arts Council Artist of the Year award .
