Zitkála-Šá

Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird in Lakota, was a writer and Native American rights activist. Also known as Gertude Simmons Bonnin, she was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to a Dakota Sioux woman, Ellen Tate Iyohiwin Simmons, and a white man, Felker Simmons, on February 22, 1876. At eight, Zitkála-Šá attended White’s Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker school in Wabash, Indiana due to missionaries visiting her home. Here she was made to use the missionary name Gertrute Simmons to distance her from her Native culture, as was common practice in Native American Boarding Schools. In future writings she condemned the routine beatings given to students and wrote about how her long hair was cut to look more appealing to her white teachers. Some children even died from neglect, abuse, and unsanitary conditions, including a close friend of Zitkála-Šá. 

Zitkála-Šá moved back to her family’s reservation in 1887 due to her school trauma, but would later write on how it felt she no longer fit in at home. By 1890 she returned to the school in Indiana where she had a better experience. By this point, Zitkála-Šá abandoned the use of her English name, “Gertrude,” as a way to reclaim aspects of her Indigenous identity. On the day of her graduation, she gave a commencement speech titled, “The Progress of Women,” where she advocated for women’s equality. A local newspaper, the Wabash Plain Dealer, called her speech a “masterpiece,” praising her eloquence and writing as “literary perfection”. 

By 19, Zitkála-Šá enrolled at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. In March of 1896 she represented Earlham College at an oratory competition in Indianapolis, speaking on Native American equality and the pain that Native Americans faced due to colonial expansion. Zitkála-Šá became a writer after graduation, writing a collection of folklore titled, Old Indian Legends, as well as writing autobiographical stories. She was most famously a co-author of the book, Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery, which discussed the injustices indigenous people faced due to the American government seizing their land. In 1916, Zitkála-Šá moved to Washington DC, becoming the secretary for the Society of the American Indian, the first Native American rights organization, serving as a liaison between the society and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1926 she founded the National Council of American Indians, serving as president. Her advocacy for Native Americans led to her appointment in 1928 as an advisor to the U.S. government’s Meriam Commission, which sought to improve the health and treatment of Native Americans. Zitkála-Šá remained an active voice for Native American rights until her death in 1938. Her name still echoes in the 21st century through an opera on her life titled: Mináǧi kiŋ dowáŋ: A Zitkála-Šá Opera and her image on a 2024 American Women quarter.