Crying for a Dream

Book excerpt: A powerful collection of text and full-color photographs that offers an intimate glimpse of Native American life. • Includes rare photos and firsthand accounts of the sun dance, sacred pipe, yuwipi, and vision quest ceremonies. • By internationally recognized ethnographer Richard Erdoes, author of Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions and Gift of Power. How do you go about knowing a people? In this phenomenal combination of landscape, ceremony, individual portrait, and prose, Richard Erdoes brings forth the lesser seen world of the Native American experience and vision. With the aid of firsthand accounts collected during three decades of personal interactions with indigenous tribes, Erdoes chronicles the traditional rites, individual lives, and historical persecution of North America's indigenous peoples. The images and words of Crying for a Dream represent Erdoes' finest work. His focus on the natural and sacred world of North America's indigenous peoples includes elements of the Sioux ceremonial cycle and portraits of native peoples from the plains, mesas, and deserts. The sun dance, sacred pipe, yuwipi, and vision quest are described by the author and his subjects and are illustrated with more than 70 photographs.