Reflections of My Father: A Biography of the Nelson Family and my Life in the U.s. Army During World War Ii

Nelson-Holt, Sgt Cleveland V. Nelson, R, Carmen

THE BIOGRAPHY OF MOOT NELSON Carmen Nelson-Holt is the third child out of seven children born to Cleveland "Moot" V. Nelson. She became inspired to write a biography of her late father and his family after typing the original manuscript of his World War II diary. Moot Nelson was a Lakota Sioux who grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota from 1920 until the early 1950s. During his youth, he performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show then attended school at a Catholic mission where he excelled in sports to overcome the hardship of mission life. Later on, he accepted a heartbreaking job of assisting the Klamath tribe in the termination of their land and the rights that came with it. During the later years of his BIA career, he became an agency superintendent on the Pine Ridge Reservation during the Wounded Knee conflict with the American Indian Movement. Moot also had a sister who enlisted during World War II. Her name was Ida Belle Nelson Amiotte, and she tells the story of her time in the military. Moot's great-grandfather was John Y. Nelson, who lived an adventurous life in the 1800s. He was a trader, a hunter, a pony express rider, a scout and guide with the U.S. Army, a member of the original Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and became a Sioux Indian brave. Today, an original 1878 life-sized poster of him hangs in the Reg Lenna Civic Theatre in Jamestown, New York. It was discovered in 2002, when a brick wall on a building adjacent to the Reg Lenna Civic Center collapsed.