SD Nelson

2017 South Dakota Festival of Books, South Dakota State University – 2017.

The artist has a diverse ethnic background. He is descended from Norse and American Indian heritage and is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the Dakotas with ancestry to the Sioux or Lakota people. Nelson's mother, Christine Rose Gipp, a quarter-blood Lakota Indian was bilingual in English and Hunkpapa Lakota language. Because his father, Thurston D. Nelson, was a career Army officer (164th Infantry Regiment, WWII-Guadalcanal, Korea, Germany, Vietnam), SD lived in many different places as a young boy including military bases in Kentucky, Kansas and Germany. His Lakota mother's ties to her home in western North Dakota brought them back to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation nearly every summer. The Lakota people of the Northern Plains are members of the Sioux, or the three allied tribes: the Lakota, the Dakota and Nakota.

It was on the Dakota prairies that Nelson developed his passion for landscapes, star-filled nights and traditional Lakota imagery—"I remember one particular summer night…cricket song filled my ears. Then, shimmering overhead, the Northern Lights came dancing, pale green at first, then in ethereal robes of red and gold; spiraling ever upward…colors vanishing, only to reappear. Although I was staring directly into the heavens, from the corner of my eye, I saw something.  The sacred something that Lakota people believe is within all things.  I was only a boy, but I was seeing in a Wakan manner, in a sacred way."  

National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC – 2006, 2010.

The author has lectured at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and he was the keynote speaker for Read North Dakota 2010 (NDHC).  Nelson was chosen as the 1997 feature artist for the Inter-Tribal Ceremonial – Gallup, New Mexico and for the Night Visions exhibition in Flagstaff, Arizona. He is the President of Read at Home (readathome.org), a 501c3 non-profit literacy program for preschool Native American children that currently serves hundreds of children on the Navajo Nation, the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation and the Gila River Indian Community.  

Night Visions, Coconino Center for the Arts, AZ - 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017.

Nelson taught Art in the public schools in Wahpeton, North Dakota (1975–76). In 1976 he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona to teach Art at East Flagstaff Junior High (1976–2003), now known as Mount Elden Middle School, there he met Alan Jim, a Navajo medicine man and a Lakota Sun Dancer.  Alan Jim and another Lakota Sun Dancer, Dicky Arias, mentored Nelson in the practice of traditional Lakota ways.

SD graduated from North High School in Fargo, ND (1968—Hall of Fame).  He earned his bachelor's degree in Art at Minnesota State University at Moorhead in 1972. During his undergraduate studies, Nelson attended talks given by both Russell Means and Dennis Banks who spoke on the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the reclaiming of American Indian heritage. His early influences were the French Impressionists and N.C. Wyeth who was known for his dramatic and realistic illustrations of classic stories and fables.

SD Nelson was born Stephen D. Nelson (born January 25, 1950) at the United States Army Station Hospital in Fort Knox, Kentucky. He is an American illustrator and author of many children's books including Black Elk’s Vision, Gift Horse, The Star People and Buffalo Bird Girl. Nelson's work has been praised as “stirring, inspirational, original and beautifully illustrated”. His books have received the American Indian Library Association – Honor Book Award 2016.; the Spur Award – Western Writers of America 2004, 2006 (Finalist Awards 2005, 2011, 2016); the Notable Book Award – American Library Association 2001, 2011, and the Bluebonnet Master List Award – Texas Library Association 2011.