• Andrew Standing Soldier was a graduate of the Pine Ridge [Reservation] Boarding School in North Dakota, where he worked with Olle Nordmark, a Swede hired as a federal artist-in-residence.

• Standing Soldier went on to study with Nordmark at the Indian Art Center in Fort Sill Oklahoma during the late 1930s, along with other muralists, including Woody Crumbo.

• Standing Soldier earned a commission to paint the mural in the Blackfoot, Idaho, Post Office during the New Deal.

• During the 1930s the US government hired the artist to illustrate a series of primers in English and Lakota (Sioux) for use on reservations and in non-Native schools.