55 Facts About Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa, Zitkala-Sa, was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist.

Zitkala-Sa was known by her Anglicized and married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin.

Zitkala-Sa 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.

Zitkala-Sa 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-Sa served as the council's president until her death in 1938.

Zitkala-Sa has been noted as one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century.

Zitkala-Sa was born on February 22,1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Zitkala-Sa was raised by her Dakota mother, whose English name was Ellen Simmons.

Zitkala-Sa's father was a Frenchman named Felker, who abandoned the family when Zitkala-Sa was very young.

Zitkala-Sa 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-Sa was eight, missionaries came to the reservation.

Zitkala-Sa later wrote about this period in her work, The School Days of an Indian Girl.

Zitkala-Sa 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.

In 1887, Zitkala-Sa returned to the Yankton Reservation to live with her mother.

In 1891, wanting more education, Zitkala-Sa decided at age fifteen to return to the White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute.

Zitkala-Sa planned to gain more through her education than becoming a housekeeper, a role the school anticipated most female students would pursue.

Zitkala-Sa studied piano and violin and started to teach music at White's after the music teacher resigned.

In June 1895, when Zitkala-Sa was awarded her diploma, she gave a speech on the inequality of women's rights, which was praised highly by the local newspaper.

From 1897 to 1899 Zitkala-Sa studied and played the violin at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Also in 1901, Zitkala-Sa was sent by Carlisle's founder, Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, to the Yankton Reservation to recruit students.

Zitkala-Sa 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.

Zitkala-Sa resented his rigid program to assimilate Native Americans into dominant white culture and the limitations of the curriculum.

Zitkala-Sa returned to the Yankton Reservation after her time at the Carlisle School and cared for her ailing mother.

Zitkala-Sa spent this time gathering material for her collection of traditional Sioux stories to publish in Old Indian Legends, commissioned by the Boston publisher Ginn and Company.

Zitkala-Sa 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.

Zitkala-Sa served in the Quarter Master Corps in Washington, DC, and was honorably discharged with the rank of captain in 1920.

Zitkala-Sa had a fruitful writing career, with two major periods.

Zitkala-Sa continued to write during the following years, but she did not publish any of these writings.

Zitkala-Sa wrote "A Warrior's Daughter", published in 1902 in Volume 6 of Everybody's Magazine.

In 1902, Zitkala-Sa published "Why I Am a Pagan" in Atlantic Monthly, volume 90.

Zitkala-Sa countered the contemporary trend that suggested Native Americans readily adopted and conformed to the Christianity forced on them in schools and public life.

Zitkala-Sa published some of her most influential writings, including American Indian Stories with the Hayworth Publishing House.

Zitkala-Sa created the Indian Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, working as a researcher for it through much of the 1920s.

Zitkala-Sa's autobiography contrasted the charm of her early life on the reservation with the "iron routine" which she found in the assimilation boarding schools.

Zitkala-Sa was an active member of the Society of American Indians, which published American Indian Magazine.

Zitkala-Sa called for recognition of Native American culture and traditions, while advocating US citizenship rights to bring Native Americans into mainstream America.

Zitkala-Sa believed this was the way that they could both gain political power and protect their cultures.

Together, in 1910, they started their collaboration on the music for The Sun Dance Opera, for which Zitkala-Sa wrote the libretto and songs.

Zitkala-Sa played Sioux melodies on the violin and flute, and Hanson used this as the basis of his music composition.

Zitkala-Sa based it on the Lakota Sun Dance, which the federal government prohibited the Ute from performing on the reservation.

Zitkala-Sa was politically active throughout most of her adult life.

Zitkala-Sa 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.

Zitkala-Sa reported incidents of abuse resulting from children's refusal to pray in a Christian manner.

From Washington, Zitkala-Sa began lecturing nationwide on behalf of SAI to promote greater awareness of the cultural and tribal identity of Native Americans.

From 1926 until she died in 1938, Zitkala-Sa served as president, major fundraiser, and speaker for the NCAI.

Zitkala-Sa was active in the 1920s in the movement for women's rights, joining the General Federation of Women's Clubs in 1921.

Zitkala-Sa helped initiate a government investigation into the exploitation of Native Americans in Oklahoma and the attempts being made to defraud them of drilling rights and leasing fees for their oil-rich lands.

Zitkala-Sa undertook a speaking tour across the country for the General Federation of Women's Clubs where she called for the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Zitkala-Sa encouraged them to support the Curtis Bill, which she believed would be favorable for Indians.

Zitkala-Sa continued to work for civil rights, and better access to health care and education for Native Americans until she died in 1938.

Zitkala-Sa died on January 26,1938, in Washington, DC, at the age of 61.

Zitkala-Sa is buried as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin in Arlington National Cemetery with her husband Raymond.

Zitkala-Sa has been recognized by the naming of a Venusian crater "Bonnin" in her honor.

Zitkala-Sa lived part of her life in the Lyon Park neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, DC.

Zitkala-Sa left an influential theory of Indian resistance and a crucial model for reform.