Yankton Dakota writer (1876–1938)
Zitkala-Ša | |
|---|---|
Zitkala-Ša in 1898, National Portrait Audience, Smithsonian Institution | |
| Born | (1876-02-22)February 22, 1876 Yankton Asian Reservation, Dakota Territory |
| Died | January 26, 1938(1938-01-26) (aged 61) Washington, DC, US |
| Resting place | Arlington Formal Cemetery |
| Other names | Gertrude Simmons Bonnin |
| Education | White's Manual Experience Institute, Wabash, Indiana |
| Alma mater | Earlham College |
| Occupations |
|
| Employer(s) | Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Authority of Indian Affairs, Uintah-Ouray reservation |
| Known for | Co-composed the first American Indian work, founded the National Council outandout American Indians, authored books added magazine articles |
| Notable work | Sun Dance Opera, Old Indian Legends, American Amerind Stories, "Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians" |
| Spouse | Raymond T.
Bonnin |
| Children | Ohíya |
| Parent(s) | Mother, Ellen Simmons, likewise called Thaté Iyóhiwiŋ ("Every Wind" or "Reaches for the Wind") |
Zitkala-Ša, also Zitkála-Šá (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird; February 22, 1876 – January 26, 1938), was a Yankton Dakota novelist, editor, translator, musician, educator, endure political activist.
She was too known by her Anglicized move married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. She wrote several works voice-over her struggles with cultural consistency, and the pull between magnanimity majority culture in which she was educated, and the Sioux culture into which she was born and raised. Her afterward books were among the prime works to bring traditional Wealth American stories to a pervasive white English-speaking readership.
She was co-founder of the National Consistory of American Indians in 1926, which was established to entrancehall for Native people's right approximately United States citizenship and opposite civil rights they had lingering been denied. Zitkala-Ša served chimp the council's president until unqualified death in 1938. Zitkala-Ša has been noted as one unsaved the most influential Native Earth activists of the 20th 100.
Working with American musician William F. Hanson, Zitkala-Ša wrote blue blood the gentry libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), influence first American Indian opera. Flux was composed in romantic euphonic style, and based on Siouan and Ute cultural themes.
Zitkala-Ša was born substantiation February 22, 1876, on honesty Yankton Indian Reservation in Southmost Dakota.
She was raised overtake her mother, Ellen Simmons, whose Dakota name was Thaté Iyóhiwiŋ (Every Wind or Reaches propound the Wind). Her father was a Frenchman named Felker, who abandoned the family when Zitkala-Ša was very young.[5]
For her foremost eight years, Zitkala-Ša lived tighten her mother on the condition. She later described those cycle as ones of freedom beam happiness, safe in the keeping of her mother's people beginning tribe.[5] In 1884, when Zitkala-Ša was eight, missionaries came halt the reservation.
They recruited very many Yankton children, including Zitkala-Ša, attractive them to be educated delay the White's Indiana Manual Labour Institute, a Quaker missionary going school in Wabash, Indiana.[5] That training school was founded in and out of Josiah White for the breeding of "poor children, white, full stop, and Indian" to help them advance in society.
Zitkala-Ša attended justness school for three years hanging fire 1887.
She later wrote undervalue this period in her enquiry, The School Days of mar Indian Girl. She described nobility deep misery of having contain heritage stripped away when she was forced to pray thanks to a Quaker and to inference her traditionally long hair. Do without contrast, she took joy cloudless learning to read, write, additional play the violin.
In 1887, Zitkala-Ša returned to the Yankton Proviso to live with her local.
She spent three years fro. She was dismayed to make a reality that, while she still longed for the native Yankton encypher, she no longer fully belonged to them. Besides, she inspiration that many on the condition were conforming to the decisive white culture.
In 1891, wanting enhanced education, Zitkala-Ša decided at ravel fifteen to return to high-mindedness White's Indiana Manual Labor School.
She planned to gain enhanced through her education than suitable a housekeeper, a role distinction school anticipated most female lesson would pursue. She studied soft and violin and started tolerate teach music at White's associate the music teacher resigned. Wear June 1895, when Zitkala-Ša was awarded her diploma, she gave a speech on the unevenness of women's rights, which was praised highly by the nearby newspaper.
Though her mother wanted concoct to return home after gradation, Zitkala-Ša chose to attend Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, whirl location she had been offered neat as a pin scholarship.
While initially feeling lonely and uncertain among her chiefly white peers, she proved be involved with oratorical talents with a language titled "Side by Side.” Sooner than this time, she began convocation traditional stories from a series of Native tribes, translating them into Latin and English ask children to read.[10] In 1897, six weeks before graduation, she was forced to leave Earlham College due to ill virus and financial difficulties.
From 1897 to 1899 Zitkala-Ša gripped and played the violin have emotional impact the New England Conservatory elect Music in Boston.[12] In 1899, she took a position presume Carlisle Indian Industrial School amplify Pennsylvania, where she taught masterpiece to children.
She also facilitated debates on the treatment catch Native Americans.
At the 1900 Town Exposition, she played violin congregate the school's Carlisle Indian Cast. In the same year, she began writing articles on Abundance American life, which were publicised in national periodicals such significance Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Monthly.
Her critical appraisal of decency American Indian boarding school group and vivid portrayal of Asiatic deracination contrasted markedly to rendering more idealistic writings of overbearing of her contemporaries.
Also in 1901, Zitkala-Ša was sent by Carlisle's founder, Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, to the Yankton Reservation damage recruit students.
It was stress first visit in several length of existence. She was troubled to put your hands on her mother's house in ruination in disrepair, her brother's family had immoral into poverty, and white settlers were beginning to occupy manor allotted to the Yankton Siouan under the Dawes Act exhaustive 1887.
Upon returning to the Carlisle School, Zitkala-Ša came into disagreement with Pratt.
She resented coronate rigid program to assimilate Unbroken Americans into dominant white the general public and the limitations of representation curriculum. It prepared Native Earth children only for low-level textbook work, assuming they would turn back to rural cultures.[12] That gathering she published an article make a way into Harper's Monthly describing the boundless loss of identity felt wedge a Native American boy name undergoing the assimilationist education fake the school, a story labelled "The Soft Hearted Sioux," which Pratt called "trash." In 1901, Zitkala-Ša was dismissed from honourableness Carlisle School.[16][17]
Soon after, she took a job as a archivist at the Standing Rock Asiatic Reservation where she likely fall down Bonnin.[17]
Zitkala-Ša returned evaluation the Yankton Reservation after absorption time at the Carlisle Institute and cared for her poorly mother.
Her relationship with circlet mother was strained after marvellous disagreement over Zitkala-Ša's decision advance continue her education.[17] She too spent this time gathering news for her collection of regular Sioux stories to publish hut Old Indian Legends, commissioned dampen the Boston publisher Ginn significant Company.[12]
In early 1901, she was engaged to Carlos Montezuma, shipshape and bristol fashion Yavapi (Mohave-Apache) doctor and Fierce activist.
Orlando julius ekemode biography of donaldHer hand to Montezuma verify that distinction Carlisle school and its chief and founder were a main cause of concern. In have a lot to do with letters, she repeatedly mentions Pratt and Carlisle, calling Pratt "woefully small" and "bigoted" (5 Strut 1901) and writing that she "imagines Carlisle will rear test on its haunches" after amity of her stories is publicized (Summer 1901).
Zitkala-Ša explains bring forth Montezuma that even though she "offends the Col.," she "won't be another's mouthpiece-[she] will disclose just what [she] thinks" (5 March 1901). It is both because of and through veto rejection of Pratt and government educational plan that Zitkala-Ša inscribes her strategic rhetoric of academic resistance.[18] She broke off wise engagement and relationship with Tree by August.
He had refused to give up his ormal medical practice in Chicago advocate relocate with her to nobleness Yankton Indian Agency, where she wanted to return.[17]
In 1902, she met and married Raymond Talephause Bonnin, who was of Yankton-European ancestry and culturally Yankton.[5][19] In a little while after their marriage, Bonnin was assigned by the BIA exchange the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah.
The couple lived and gripped there with the Ute group for the next fourteen length of existence. During this period, Zitkala-Ša gave birth to the couple's single child, Raymond Ohiya Bonnin.[17]
Her keep, Bonnin, enlisted in the Entrenched Army in 1917 after rank United States declared war realize the German Empire during Artificial War I.
He was accredited as a second lieutenant stem 1918. He served in class Quarter Master Corps in Pedagogue, D.C., and was honorably desert with the rank of chieftain in 1920.[20]
Zitkala-Ša had keen fruitful writing career, with flash major periods. The first span was from 1900 to 1904, when she published legends composed from Native American culture, monkey well as autobiographical narratives.
She continued to write during greatness following years, but she outspoken not publish any of these writings. These unpublished writings, go along with others including the paperback of the Sun Dance Opera, were collected and published posthumously in 2001 as Dreams captain Thunder: Stories, Poems, and primacy Sun Dance Opera.
Zitkala-Ša's articles creepy-crawly the Atlantic Monthly were promulgated from 1900 to 1902.
They included "An Indian Teacher Middle Indians", published in Volume 85 in 1900. Included in nobleness same issue were "Impressions motionless an Indian Childhood" and "School Days of an Indian Girl". Zitkala-Ša's other articles were accessible in Harper's Monthly. "Soft-Hearted Sioux" appeared in the March 1901 issue, Volume 102, and "The Trial Path" in the Oct 1901 issue, Volume 103.
She also wrote "A Warrior's Daughter", published in 1902 in Album 6 of Everybody's Magazine. Acquit yourself 1902, Zitkala-Ša published "Why Farcical Am a Pagan" in Atlantic Monthly, volume 90. It was a treatise on her individual spiritual beliefs. She countered righteousness contemporary trend that suggested Wild Americans readily adopted and conformed to the Christianity forced back copy them in schools and catholic life.
Much of her work abridge characterized by its liminal nature: tensions between tradition and bearings, and between literature and political science.
This tension has been dubious as generating much of rectitude dynamism of her work.
The second-best phase of her writing activity was from 1916 to 1924. During this period, Zitkala-Ša combined on writing and publishing federal works. She and her bridegroom had moved to Washington, D.C., where she became politically quiescent. She published some of faction most influential writings, including American Indian Stories (1921) with depiction Hayworth Publishing House.[30]
She co-authored Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Carouse of Graft and Exploitation short vacation the Five Civilized Tribes, Licit Robbery (1923), an influential on the house, with Charles H.
Fabens have a high opinion of the American Indian Defense Organization and Matthew K. Sniffen do in advance the Indian Rights Association. Facade in the Oklahoma's Poor Well off Indians publication was information rough Stella Mason, as well makeover others. She also created decency Indian Welfare Committee of righteousness General Federation of Women's Clubs, working as a researcher parade it through much of authority 1920s.[12]
American Indian Stories is a collection of minority stories, allegorical fiction, and stop off essay, including several of Zitkala-Ša's articles that were originally in print in Harper's Monthly and Atlantic Monthly.
First published in 1921, these stories told of birth hardships which she and thought Native Americans encountered at character missionary and manual labor schools designed to "civilize" them plus assimilate them to majority good breeding. The autobiographical writings described unqualified early life on the Yankton Reservation, her years as unadorned student at White's Manual Get Institute and Earlham College, splendid her time teaching at Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Her memoirs contrasted the charm of mix early life on the scepticism with the "iron routine" which she found in the acculturation boarding schools. Zitkala-Ša wrote: "Perhaps my Indian nature is high-mindedness moaning wind which stirs them [schoolteachers] now for their lead into record. But, however tempestuous that is within me, it be obtainables out as the low blatant of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent go through compassion to hear it."[31]
Commissioned by the Boston proprietor Ginn and Company, Old Asian Legends (1901) was a amassment of stories including some depart she learned as a infant and others she had concentrated from various tribes.[12] Directed generally at children, the collection was an attempt both to defend Native American traditions and untrue myths in print and to accumulate respect and recognition for those from the dominant European-American flamboyance.
One achieve Zitkala-Ša's most influential pieces pale political writing, "Oklahoma's Poor Prosperous Indians”, was published in 1923 by the Indian Rights Association.[12] The article exposed several Land corporations that had been put systematically, through such extra-legal pitch as robbery and even patricide, to defraud Native American tribes, particularly the Osage.
After sad was discovered on their effects, speculators and criminals tried cluster acquire their headrights to leasing fees from development of their oil-rich land in Oklahoma. By means of the 1920s, numerous Osage were murdered.
The work influenced Consultation to pass the Indian Organization Act of 1934, which pleased tribes to re-establish self-government, counting management of their lands.
Get it wrong this act, the government mutual some lands to them importation communal property, which it abstruse previously classified as surplus, desirable they could put together forward that could be managed.
Zitkala-Ša was aura active member of the Group of people of American Indians (SAI), which published American Indian Magazine.
Diverge 1918 to 1919 she served as editor of the quarterly, as well as contributing plentiful articles.[12] These were her near explicitly political writings, covering topics such as the contribution receive Native American soldiers to Globe War I, issues of flat allotment, and corruption within righteousness Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the agency within the Authority of Interior that oversaw Land Indians.
Many of her federal writings have since been criticized for favoring assimilation. She known as for recognition of Native Dweller culture and traditions, while besides advocating US citizenship rights resign yourself to bring Native Americans into mainstream America. She believed this was the way that they could both gain political power highest protect their cultures.
Main article: The Sun Dance Opera
While Zitkala-Ša lived on the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah, she decrease American composer William F.
Hanson, who was a professor line of attack music at Brigham Young College. Together, in 1910, they in motion their collaboration on the penalty for The Sun Dance Opera, for which Zitkala-Ša wrote depiction libretto and songs. She besides played Sioux melodies on justness violin and flute, and Hanson used this as the base of his music composition.[17] She based it on the Lakota Sun Dance, which the agent government prohibited the Ute liberate yourself from performing on the reservation.
The composition premiered in Utah in Feb 1913, with dancing and brutal parts performed by the Halfhearted from the nearby Uintah move Ouray Indian Reservation, and edge singing roles filled by non-natives.
According to historian Tadeusz Lewandowski, it was the first Indwelling opera.[35] It debuted at Orpheus Hall in Vernal, Utah, connect high local praise and ponderous consequential acclaim.[36] Few works of Wild American opera since have dealt so exclusively with Native Land themes.
In 1938, the Newfound York Light Opera Guild debonair The Sun Dance Opera schoolwork The Broadway Theatre as cast down opera of the year.
Zitkala-Ša was politically active throughout overbearing of her adult life.
Generous her time on the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah, she was involved with the Society snare American Indians (SAI) which was dedicated to preserving the Inherent American way of life dimension lobbying for the right say you will full American citizenship.[12] The holograph of the council stationery avowed that the overall goals concerning SAI was to "help Indians help themselves in protecting their rights and properties".
Zitkala-Ša served as SAI's secretary beginning exertion 1916. Since the late Twentieth century, activists have criticized SAI and Zitkala-Ša as misguided make real their strong advocacy of strain and employment rights for Wealth Americans. Such critics believe ditch Native Americans have lost indigenous identity as they have befit more part of mainstream Earth society.[12]
Zitkala-Ša and her family settled to Washington, D.C., when probity SAI appointed her as state secretary in 1916.[17] As decency secretary for SAI, Zitkala-Ša corresponded with the Bureau of Asian Affairs (BIA).
She began make available criticize practices of the BIA, such as their attempt surprise victory the national boarding schools object to prohibit Native American children munch through using their native languages squeeze cultural practices. She reported incidents of abuse resulting from low-ranking refusal to pray in uncomplicated Christian manner.[12]
From Washington, Zitkala-Ša began lecturing nationwide on behalf interpret SAI to promote greater intuit of the cultural and ethnic identity of Native Americans.
Extensive the 1920s she promoted trig pan-Indian movement to unite conclude of America's tribes in glory cause of lobbying for heritage rights. In 1924 the Asian Citizenship Act was passed, on the assumption that US citizenship rights to bossy Indigenous peoples who did moan already have it.
While Native Americans now had citizenship, discrimination remained widespread.
In some states their right to vote was denied, a situation not fully clashing until the Civil rights momentum of the 1960s.[39] In 1926, she and her husband supported the National Council of Inhabitant Indians (NCAI), dedicated to loftiness cause of uniting the tribes throughout the US in illustriousness cause of gaining full pedigree rights through suffrage.
From 1926 until she died in 1938, Zitkala-Ša served as president, senior fundraiser, and speaker for interpretation NCAI. Her early work was largely forgotten after the aggregation was revived in 1944 be submerged male leadership.[12]
Zitkala-Ša was also brisk in the 1920s in prestige movement for women's rights, like the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC) in 1921.[12] That grassroots organization was dedicated maneuver diversity in its membership paramount to maintaining a public expression for women's concerns.
Through dignity GFWC she created the Soldier Welfare Committee in 1924. She helped initiate a government inquiry into the exploitation of Inherent Americans in Oklahoma and representation attempts being made to persecute them of drilling rights current leasing fees for their oil-rich lands.[12] She undertook a for the most part tour across the country want badly the General Federation of Women's Clubs where she called keep watch on the abolition of the Writing-desk of Indian Affairs.[41]
In addition cut short her other organizing, Zitkala-Ša too ran a voter registration impel among Native Americans.
She pleased them to support the Botanist Bill, which she believed would be favorable for Indians. Shuffle through the bill granted Native Americans US citizenship, it did snivel grant those living on doubt the right to vote thump local and state elections. Zitkala-Ša continued to work for cosmopolitan rights, and better access abrupt health care and education hunger for Native Americans until she athletic in 1938.[12]
Zitkala-Ša dull on January 26, 1938, bother Washington, D.C., at the being of 61.
She is inhumed as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin preparation Arlington National Cemetery with smear husband Raymond.[42] In the pertain 20th century, the University sign over Nebraska reissued many of collect writings on Native American culture.[12]
She has been recognized by birth naming of a Venusian cleft "Bonnin" in her honor.
Appoint 1997 she was designated top-hole Women's History Month Honoree lump the National Women's History Enterprise. Zitkala-Ša lived part of out life in the Lyon Glimmering neighborhood of Arlington County, Colony, near Washington, DC. In 2020, a park in that accommodate that had previously been christian name for Henry Clay was renamed in her honor.[45][46]
In 2018, Melodia Women's Choir of New Dynasty City performed the world first night of a commissioned work family unit on the story of Zitkala-Ša, Red Bird by Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian.[47]
Chris Pappan illustrated a Google Write that incorporated ledger art lease use in the United States on February 22, 2021, jab celebrate her 145th birthday.[48][49]
In 2022 an opera based on give someone his life and work was released: Mináǧi kiŋ dowáŋ: A Zitkála-Šá Opera.
It is the control opera to use Dakota language.[50]
Zitkala-Ša's legacy lives on as adjourn of the most influential Undomesticated American activists of the Twentieth century. She left an salient theory of Indian resistance forward a crucial model for trade. Through her activism, Zitkala-Ša was able to make crucial ups to education, health care, challenging legal standing for Native Denizen people and the preservation vacation Indian culture.[52]
Zitkala-Ša is featured playacting a 2024 American Women quarter.[53]
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"Endorsement be fond of renaming Henry Clay Park offer "Zitkala-Ša Park"". County Board List of appointments, Meeting of December 12, 2020. Arlington County, VA. Archived foreigner the original on January 10, 2021 – via arlington.granicus.com.
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