What Early Readers Are Saying
“I love the book… it tells such an important story with empathy and precision.”
— Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of "Reviving Ophelia", "Women Rowing North", and other books including 4 New York Times bestsellers
“Zintka mashes together Brad Colerick’s haunting, thought-stimulating song with Scott Feldmann’s dancing, juxtaposed visual imagery into a compelling portrayal.”
— Steve Fjeldsted, Director of Library, Arts, and Culture, South Pasadena Public Library 2006 - 2019; previously County Library Director in Central, and Northern California
“You have an amazing way of presenting history, and that needs to be shared broadly!”
— Chris Hochstetler, Executive Director - Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer
“WELL, WELL, WELL!! This is one of the best and artistic films on the subject of forgotten American Indians that I have ever seen. Congratulations on this excellent film.”
— Marc Wanamaker, Founder of Bison Archives; renown historian, archivist, and expert in film history.
Zintka! will be released on September 27, 2024. Ask for it from your indie bookseller.
48 pages include: illustrated lyrics as ledger art, short bio of Zintka, historic timeline, song lyrics and lead sheet plus a brief description of ledger art genre. QR code inside links to short film online.
A true story of "found & lost". . . and found again. Zintka tells the troubled tale of a Native American girl caught between two worlds, accepted by neither. A Lakota (Sioux) baby and her mother who were fleeing for safety became victims in the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. The baby was found four days after a South Dakota blizzard, alive by the warmth of her mother's dead body. She was adopted by a prominent soldier and his famous suffragette wife to be raised in their white, high-society circles. Zintka was not accepted there because of racial prejudices in the era of forced assimilation. Neither was she was accepted by her own people when she sought out her roots, partly because she did not speak their language.
Named "Lost Bird," (Zintkála Nuni in Lakota,) at the moment she was separated from her Lakota caregivers, she was chronicled in newspapers from her discovery to her death. Zintka attempted to succeed in show business, joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, San Francisco's vaudeville circuit, and as an extra in Hollywood silent films. Zintka died in the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920 and was buried in a pauper's grave in Hanford, California. Finally, in 1991 her story was discovered through efforts of her biographer Renée Sansom Flood. Lakota leadership from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota ceremoniously reburied her at the Wounded Knee Monument, near the mass grave of the disaster, which included her birth mother.
The name "Lost Bird" came to describe Native American children adopted off the reservation by non-Indians after the publication of her biography, "Lost Bird: Spirit of the Lakota" (Scribner, 1995).
Creative thinker. Animator. Author. Illustrator.
Advance Praise for Zintka!
BookLife Review Editor’s Pick for outstanding quality called out as a: “Stunning artistic recreation of Zintkála Nuni’s story.”Read the review.
Zintka! Lost Bird of Wounded Knee — Zintkála Nuni paperback book, 48 pages
ISBN: 979-8-218-40301-0
$16.99
Zintka! Lost Bird of Wounded Knee — Zintkála Nuni hardcover book, 48 pages
ISBN: 979-8-218-43964-4
$29.99