Diane Wilson (Dakota)

is a writer and educator, who has published five award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications.

 

Wilson’s 2021 novel, The Seed Keeper, (Milkweed Editions) received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, was selected for the 2025-26 NEA Big Read, and is published in France. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Wilson's middle-grade biography: Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, was an Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award. She is a co-author of a picture book, Where We Come From, (Lerner Publishing), winner of the 2023 Carter G. Woodson award.

 

Her most recent essays—which explore seed advocacy, food sovereignty, social justice, and cultural recovery—have been featured in acclaimed anthologies, including: Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations (2021); We Are Meant to Rise (2021); and A Good Time for the Truth (2016) as well as in notable environmental publications, including Orion: Nature and Culture and Emergence.

Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.

Wilson is enrolled on the Sicangu Oyate (Rosebud) reservation in South Dakota, and is a Mdewakanton descendent. She lives near the St. Croix River in Minnesota, where she cares for an Indigenous seed garden, native perennials for pollinators, and a Tamarack bog.