Zitkala-Ša, also Zitkála-Šá (Lakota: , meaning Red Bird; February 22, 1876 – January 26, 1938), was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. She was also known by her anglicized and married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity, and the pull between the majority culture in which she was educated, and the Dakota culture into which she was born and raised. Her later books were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white English-speaking readership.

She was co-founder of the National Council of American Indians in 1926, which was established to lobby for Native people's right to United States citizenship and other civil rights they had long been denied. Zitkala-Ša served as the council's president until her death in 1938. Zitkala-Ša has been noted as one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century. Working with American musician William F. Hanson, Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), the first American Indian opera. It was composed in romantic musical style, and based on Sioux and Ute cultural themes.

Early life and education

thumb|upright|left|Zitkala-Ša with her [[violin in 1898]]

Zitkala-Ša was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was raised by her Dakota mother ("Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind"), whose English name was Ellen Simmons. Her father was a Frenchman named Felker, who abandoned the family when Zitkala-Ša was very young.

For her first eight years, Zitkala-Ša lived with her mother on the reservation and learned the Dakota language. She later described those days as ones of freedom and happiness, safe in the care of her mother's people and tribe. In 1897, six weeks before graduation, she was forced to leave Earlham College due to ill health and financial difficulties.

Music and teaching

thumb|upright|Zitkala-Ša, 1898, by [[Joseph Keiley]]

From 1897 to 1898 Zitkala-Ša studied and played the violin at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In 1897, she took a position at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where she taught music to children for about 18 months. She also facilitated debates on the treatment of Native Americans.

At the 1900 Paris Exposition, she played violin with the school's Carlisle Indian Band. In the same year, she began writing articles on Native American life, which were published in national periodicals such as Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Monthly. Her critical appraisal of the American Indian boarding school system and vivid portrayal of Indian deracination contrasted markedly to the more idealistic writings of most of her contemporaries.

Also in 1901, Zitkala-Ša was sent by Carlisle's founder, Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, to the Yankton Reservation to recruit students. It was her first visit in several years. She was troubled to find her mother's house in disrepair, her brother's family had fallen into poverty, and white settlers were beginning to occupy lands allotted to the Yankton Dakota under the Dawes Act of 1887.

Upon returning to the Carlisle School, Zitkala-Ša came into conflict with Pratt. She resented his rigid program to assimilate Native Americans into dominant white culture and the limitations of the curriculum. It prepared Native American children only for low-level manual work, assuming they would return to rural cultures. She broke off her engagement and relationship with Montezuma by August. He had refused to give up his private medical practice in Chicago and relocate with her to the Yankton Indian Agency, where she wanted to return. Soon after their marriage, Bonnin was assigned by the BIA to the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah. The couple lived and worked there with the Ute people for the next fourteen years. During this period, Zitkala-Ša gave birth to the couple's only child, Raymond Ohiya Bonnin.

Her husband, Bonnin, enlisted in the US Army in 1917 after the United States declared war against the German Empire during World War I. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1918. He served in the Quartermaster Corps in Washington, D.C., and was honorably discharged with the rank of captain in 1920.

Writing career

thumb|left|upright|Zitkala-Ša, 1898, by [[Gertrude Käsebier]]

Zitkala-Ša had a fruitful writing career, with two major periods. The first period was from 1900 to 1904, when she published legends collected from Native American culture, as well as autobiographical narratives. She continued to write during the following years, but she did not publish any of these writings. These unpublished writings, along with others including the libretto of the Sun Dance Opera, were collected and published posthumously in 2001 as Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera.

Zitkala-Ša's articles in the Atlantic Monthly were published from 1900 to 1902. They included "An Indian Teacher Among Indians", published in Volume 85 in 1900. Included in the same issue were "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" and "School Days of an Indian Girl". Zitkala-Ša's other articles were published in Harper's Monthly. "Soft-Hearted Sioux" appeared in the March 1901 issue, Volume 102, and "The Trial Path" in the October 1901 issue, Volume 103. She also wrote "A Warrior's Daughter", published in 1902 in Volume 6 of Everybody's Magazine. In 1902, Zitkala-Ša published "Why I Am a Pagan" in Atlantic Monthly, volume 90. It was a treatise on her personal spiritual beliefs. She countered the contemporary trend that suggested Native Americans readily adopted and conformed to the Christianity forced on them in schools and public life.

Much of her work is characterized by its liminal nature: tensions between tradition and assimilation, and between literature and politics. This tension has been described as generating much of the dynamism of her work.

The second phase of her writing career was from 1916 to 1924. During this period, Zitkala-Ša concentrated on writing and publishing political works. She and her husband had moved to Washington, D.C., where she became politically active. She published some of her most influential writings, including American Indian Stories (1921) with the Hayworth Publishing House.

She co-authored Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery (1923), an influential pamphlet, with Charles H. Fabens of the American Indian Defense Association and Matthew K. Sniffen of the Indian Rights Association. Included in the Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians publication was information about Stella Mason, as well as others. She also created the Indian Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, working as a researcher for it through much of the 1920s.

Old Indian Legends

Commissioned by the Boston publisher Ginn and Company, Old Indian Legends (1901) was a collection of stories including some that she learned as a child and others she had gathered from various tribes. It debuted at Orpheus Hall in Vernal, Utah, to high local praise and critical acclaim. Few works of Native American opera since have dealt so exclusively with Native American themes.

In 1938, the New York Light Opera Guild presented The Sun Dance Opera at The Broadway Theatre as its opera of the year.

Political activism

left|thumb|upright|Zitkala-Sa, c. 1921

Zitkala-Ša was politically active throughout most of her adult life. During her time on the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah, she was involved with the Society of American Indians (SAI) which was dedicated to preserving the Native American way of life while lobbying for the right to full American citizenship. In 1926, she and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians (NCAI), dedicated to the cause of uniting the tribes throughout the US in the cause of gaining full citizenship rights through suffrage. From 1926 until she died in 1938, Zitkala-Ša served as president, major fundraiser, and speaker for the NCAI. Her early work was largely forgotten after the organization was revived in 1944 under male leadership.

In addition to her other organizing, Zitkala-Ša also ran a voter registration drive among Native Americans. She encouraged them to support the Curtis Bill, which she believed would be favorable for Indians. Though the bill granted Native Americans US citizenship, it did not grant those living on reservations the right to vote in local and state elections. Zitkala-Ša continued to work for civil rights, and better access to health care and education for Native Americans until she died in 1938. In the late 20th century, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln reissued many of her writings on Native American culture.

In 2018, Melodia Women's Choir of New York City performed the world premiere of a commissioned work based on the story of Zitkala-Ša, Red Bird by Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian. In 2022 an opera based on her life and work was released: Mináǧi kiŋ dowáŋ: A Zitkála-Šá Opera. It is the first opera to use Dakota language.

Chris Pappan illustrated a Google Doodle that incorporated ledger art for use in the United States on February 22, 2021, to celebrate her 145th birthday. Zitkala-Ša is featured on a 2024 American Women quarter. In 2024, the United States Mint and the National Women's History Museum hosted an event honoring her memory and celebrating the release of the American Women quarter depicting her.

Writings by Zitkala-Ša

  • Old Indian Legends. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
  • American Indian Stories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
  • Zitkála-Šá. "Why I Am a Pagan." Atlantic Monthly, 1902.
  • Zitkála-Šá, Fabens, Charles H. and Matthew K. Sniffen. Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery. Philadelphia: Office of the Indian Rights Association, 1924.
  • Zitkála-Šá. Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and The Sun Dance Opera. Edited by P. Jane Hafen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. .
  • Zitkála-Šá: Letters, Speeches, and Unpublished Writings, 1898–1929. Edited by Tadeusz Lewandowski. Leiden, Boston: Brill Press, 2018. .

Scores

  • Hanson, William F., and Zitkala-Ša. The Sun Dance Opera (romantic American Indian opera, 1913, 1938). Photocopy of the original piano-vocal score, from microfilm (227 pp.). Library of Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

See also

  • Old Indian Legends
  • I Remain Alive: the Sioux Literary Renaissance
  • Zintkála Nuni

References

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  • Gertrude Bonnin -- Zitkala-Ša in Voices from the Gaps
  • Portrait of Zitkala-Ša, by Gertrude Käsebier