Just in time for the Paris Summer Olympics, Lakota gold-medal great Billy Mills has an inspiring new children’s book that tells the story of his triumph.
Just in time for the Paris Summer Games, Olympic track-and-field great Billy Mills has a brand-new children’s picture book, Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers). Out on July 2, it was written by Mills and illustrated by acclaimed Lakota artist SD Nelson.
The book tells the inspiring autobiographical story of the American gold medalist, who overcame tremendous odds to triumph at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Orphaned on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Mills, whose Oglala Lakota name is Tamakhóčhe Theȟíla, experienced poverty, racism, and health challenges in his youth. But he rose above the hardship and found healing in pursuit of his dream of becoming an Olympic athlete. His dream would come true at the Tokyo Summer Games, when he not only participated in the Olympics, but won gold in the 10,000 meters.
To help tell his story in a compelling way for kids, Mills and his publisher chose SD Nelson to illustrate. Descended from Norse and American Indian heritage, Nelson is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the Dakotas.
An award-winning author and illustrator of numerous children’s books — among them Black Elk’s Vision, Grandma’s Tipi: A Present-Day Lakota Story, Coyote Christmas, Buffalo Bird Girl, Crazy Horse and Custer: Born Enemies, and The Star People — Nelson draws on inspiration from his heritage, giving his own unique interpretations of Indigenous stories, themes, and imagery that reveal the richness and depth of Lakota life.
His paintings, which offer a contemporary interpretation of traditional Lakota imagery, are held many collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
In the runup to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, C&I caught up with Nelson at his home in Flagstaff, Arizona, to talk about working on the Wings of an Eagle with the great Billy Mills.
HOW THIS PROJECT CAME TO BE
I received an email from Andrea Spooner, a well-known editor at Little, Brown and Company in New York. She asked me if I would be interested in reading a new manuscript and possibly illustrating the story. Of course, I knew the story of the Native American athlete from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, who had triumphed at the 1964 Olympic Games. I was thrilled when asked to illustrate his new children’s book, Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills.
WHAT ILLUSTRATING THE PROJECT ENTAILED
I was inspired and also challenged by the written words from the get-go! I created hundreds of drawings, and with Andrea Spooner’s suggestions and direction we settled on a set of layouts that I would turn into a series of acrylic paintings. The original artworks are already held in the Sioux Indian Museum collection at The Journey Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota.
SOME FAVORITE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Spirit of the Eagle appears throughout this story. Like Billy Mills, I understood at a young age the transformative power of animal spirits. As a boy, my mother told me traditional Lakota stories about Coyote, the Trickster, and Iktómi, the Spider. I learned that the stars were the spirits of my ancestors, that my great-great-grandfather Mahˇpíya Kiny’An (Flying Cloud) still rode his snorting horse along the White Road of the Milky Way. Mom said if I looked carefully, I would see the Great Bear and the Star That Did Not Turn — the North Star. She told me the Life Force, or the Great Mystery, is named Wakan Tanka, that all of creation — the four-legged beings, the tall standing trees, even the wind — has a spirit and is alive.
WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE COLLABORATED WITH BILLY MILLS
I am still thrilled to think that I was the artist who created the illustrations for this children’s book. To me, Billy Mills is a living legend, and I got to run with him with every drawing and painting that I created. With each brushstroke, in my artist’s imagination, I got to fly on the Wings of an Eagle.
Find out about SD Nelson’s Read at Home organization. Dedicated to improved early literacy among Native American children, it was launched in 2018 by Nelson and others to provide resources and encourage families and children to read together. Today the nonprofit has 500 children in four Indigenous communities receiving Highlights High Five magazine each month to read at home with their families. https://readathome.org/
You can buy Wings of an Eagle on Amazon and at booksellers everywhere.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of Billy Mills
