Zitkala-Ša, also Zitkála-Šá (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, 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.
Education and its human cost
Zitkala-Ša was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was raised by her Dakota mother Thaté Iyóhiwiŋ ("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.
Zitkala-Ša later described those days as ones of freedom and happiness, safe in the care of her mother's people and tribe. In 1884, when Zitkala-Ša was eight, missionaries came to the reservation. They recruited several Yankton children, including Zitkala-Ša, taking them to be educated at the White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker missionary boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. This training school was founded by Josiah White for the education of "poor children, white, colored, and Indian" to help them advance in society.
Zitkala-Ša attended the school for three years until 1887. She later wrote about this period in her work, The School Days of an Indian Girl. She described the deep misery of having her heritage stripped away when she was forced to pray as a Quaker and to cut her traditionally long hair. By contrast, she took joy in learning to read, write, and play the violin.
Music and writing
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.
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.
While Zitkala-Ša lived on the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah, she met American composer William F. Hanson, who was a professor of music at Brigham Young University. Together, in 1910, they started their collaboration on the music for The Sun Dance Opera, for which Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs. The romantic musical combined Sioux and Ute cultural themes. She played Sioux melodies on the violin and flute, and Hanson used this as the basis of his music composition.
Citizenship and advocacy
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. The letterhead of the council stationery claimed that the overall goals for SAI was to "help Indians help themselves in protecting their rights and properties". Zitkala-Ša served as SAI's secretary beginning in 1916.
Since the late 20th century, activists have criticized SAI and Zitkala-Ša as misguided in their strong advocacy of citizenship and employment rights for Native Americans. Such critics believe that Native Americans have lost cultural identity as they have become more part of mainstream American society. Zitkala-Ša and her family relocated to Washington, D.C., when the SAI appointed her as national secretary in 1916. As the secretary for SAI, Zitkala-Ša corresponded with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Zitkala-Ša began to criticize practices of the BIA, such as their attempt at the national boarding schools to prohibit Native American children from using their native languages and cultural practices. She reported incidents of abuse resulting from children's refusal to pray in a Christian manner. From Washington, Zitkala-Ša began lecturing nationwide on behalf of SAI to promote greater awareness of the cultural and tribal identity of Native Americans.