SD Nelson
Author and artist (Standing Rock Sioux born 1950)
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.
Life and career
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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “SD Nelson” as author and artist (Standing Rock Sioux born 1950). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as author and artist (Standing Rock Sioux born 1950). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q63391462. VIAF identifies the subject as 58401087. The Library of Congress control number is n98102932. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2016, 2004 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “SD Nelson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.