VERMILLION -Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve of Rapid City, a prominent educator and writer, has been selected to receive the eighth annual South Dakota Living Indian Treasure Award, to be presented Saturday, Sept. 27, as part of the Northern Plains Tribal Arts Market in Sioux Falls. The award will be presented at the powwow and awards ceremony, beginning at 8 p.m. in the Elmen Center of Augustana College.

Presented annually to an Indian elder in recognition of contributions to the Native American art forms, the award is co-sponsored by the South Dakotans for the Arts and Northern Plains Tribal Arts. Past recipients include Emma Amiotte, Alice New Holy Blue Legs, Steve Charging Eagle, Matt and Nellie Two Bulls, Clarence Rockboy, Nellie Star Boy Menard, and the 1996 recipient, Anna Firethunder.

Sneve, 64, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, was born Feb. 21, 1933 and grew up on the Rosebud Reservation. She attended the Bureau of Indian Affairs Day School at Oak Creek and the St. Mary's School for Indian Girls at Springfield. She received a B.S. degree in English and history from South Dakota State College, Brookings, in 1954 and a master's degree in education and guidance from South Dakota State University in 1969. In 1979, Sneve was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters degree from Dakota Wesleyan University, Mitchell.

She began teaching English at White High School in 1954. During her career, taught in reservation and public high schools, later moving into counseling position in the Rapid City School system. From 1988 until her retirement in 1995, Sneve held joint appointments as an English instructor at Oglala-Lakota College (Rapid City Extension) and as a counselor at Rapid City Central High School.

During the 1970s Sneve began publishing prose fiction and essays based on her Lakota heritage. Her book, Jimmy Yellow Hawk (1972), won an award from the Council on Interracial Books. Other novels include When Thunders Spoke (1974) and The Chichi Hoohoo Bogeyman (1975). Her fiction has focused on the lives of contemporary Lakota youth, and has been praised for addressing issues such as the stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans in films and the continuing value of Native traditions in the modern world. Her 1995 work, Completing the Circle, is a documented history of the lives of the women in her family and her tribe. Her most recent publication for both children and adults is The Trickster and the Troll, was published earlier this year by the University of Nebraska Press.

She has been recognized both for her work as an educator and writer. Awards include: the 1996 Author-Illustrator Human and Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association for books and stories that have helped readers dismiss stereotypes and appreciate Native American culture. She also received the University of Nebraska Press Native American Prose Award in 1992 and the 1984 Writer of the Year Award from the Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The south Dakota State Counselors Association presented her with the 1996 Human Rights Award and she received the 1996 Spirit of Crazy Horse Award from Black Hills Seminars, Youth at Risk, for creating courage in discouraged youth.

Sneve lives in Rapid City with her husband, Vance M. Sneve. The couple has three children and four grandchildren.

For more information contact: John Day, Dean, USD College of Fine Arts, (605) 677-5481, or Janet Brown, Executive Director, South Dakotans for the Arts, P.O. Box 472, Deadwood, S.D., 57732, (605) 578-1783.