About the Author

Quentin H Young was born to Rosemary Likens Young and Mayo Beckford Young. His mother's side of the family has Lakota (Sioux) Sicangu (Brule) lineage; his father's side is Welsh. From the Lakota lineage, his grandmother's name was Rose Leaf Eliot, and his great grandmother was named Eliza Jane Milton, a full-blood Sicangu Lakota borne in 1849 in Nebraska.

 

In 1855, a soldier took Eliza from the battlefield of the Blue Water Fight and gave her to the Milton's, a white family from Missouri who later adopted her. My mother believed the reason her grandmother, Eliza, named her daughter Rose Leaf and why Rose Leaf named her daughter (my mother) Rose Mary, was due to their knowledge that the Sicangu were located on the Rosebud Reservation. It was their secret way of connecting with their Lakota Sicangu roots. Quentin has been involved in the Lakota spiritual way of life since 1950 at age 6, by 1989, he began keeping a caŋnuŋpa (pipe). In 1996 Quentin became a Sun Dancer and has danced consecutively for twenty-one years.

 

Quentin served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne from 1962 through 1965. He retired as a design engineer in the year 2000 after 30 years. During this period, he designed and developed a complete set of prison locking devices for three corporations within the United States. Today, many of his lock designs are in use throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

 

Quentin lives in Indiana with his wife, Ginger, he has two grown children, two grandchildren, and Sapa, his black cat who sat on the desk the whole time watching him write this book.