…fought for voting rights, human rights,
sacred rights, and walked ferociously
through all obstacles and became a
beacon for Indian rights and an
important role of women yesterday,
today and tomorrow…
~ Rebecca Balog, Pennsylvania
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin
(Zitkala Sa), 1876-1938 Yankton Sioux
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin was born in South Dakota around 1876. She was born into a traditional family as the third born child of Ellen Tate 'I Yohiwin Simmons, a full-blood Yankton Sioux. Gertrude later named herself Zitkala Sa, Red Bird, in Lakota. By oral narratives it is said she left her home around the age of 12 to enroll in a Quaker missionary school for Indians in Indiana, White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana. As with most children in the trade school (boarding school) experience, the uprooted children returned home to conflicted identities, broken parental bonds, and emotional disconnect from traditional ways.
Zitkala Sa then attended the currently operating Earlham College. The mission of Earlham College includes the long-standing tradition of distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). This is the same religious motto she would have experienced in the late 1800’s. She won a scholarship at the Boston Conservatory of Music for violin music which then led to an invitation in the world-renowned Paris Exposition of the Arts.
Shortly after, she dedicated her time and experience as an educator to the children of the Carlisle Indian School of Carlisle, Pennsylvania where she became editor of The American Indian Magazine, one of many publications printed on site by the students. As a trained and exceptional violin player, she joined the Carlisle Indian Band of Carlisle. In the Indian Helper (periodical published at the Carlisle Indian School by students) a reference includes:
Shortly after, she dedicated her time and experience as an educator to the children of the Carlisle Indian School of Carlisle, Pennsylvania where she became editor of The American Indian Magazine, one of many publications printed on site by the students. As a trained and exceptional violin player, she joined the Carlisle Indian Band of Carlisle. In the Indian Helper (periodical published at the Carlisle Indian School by students) a reference includes:
“On Tuesday, Miss Simmons talked upon The Achievements of the White and Red Races Compared. This from a young Indian maiden was a most thrilling and earnest appeal to the youth of her race to show to the world by their earnestness of purpose that the history of the Indian has been wrongly written, and that their motives as a people have been misunderstood. From this on, the Indian will be judged by the growing generation, who should be industrious and worthy. Every student who heard her remarks should be quickened into a deeper intensity.” (September, 1897) [3].
Even on payroll of a School based upon the motto ‘Kill the Indian and Save the Man’, Zitkala Sa faced the children and spoke of remembering the truth among the lies placed before them of racial inferiority. Consequently, as a published author, she continued to write. She wrote Soft Hearted Siouxwhile at Carlisle, which very well may have led to her termination as a teacher at Carlisle. A local Carlisle newspaper printed a critic’s piece regarding the “ungrateful and rebellious Indian woman.” The critic wrote,
"All she has in the way of literary ability and culture she owes to the good people who, from time to time, have taken her into their homes and hearts...Yet not a word of gratitude...has ever escaped her in any line of anything she has ever written for the public. By this course, she injures herself and harms the educational work in progress for the race from which she sprang....[Among other Indians better educated and more famous than her] we know of no other case of such pronounced morbidness" [2].
Zitkala Sa had been educated since the age of twelve. After university, and while teaching at Carlisle, she evaluated the objectives of the schools she had attended in various capacities. For the remainder of her life she dedicated her time to the improving American Indian issues—trailblazing for the many indigenous women to follow for years to come. She discussed her personal experiences in her manuscript, The School Days of An Indian Girl, published in 1900. She described herself as "neither a wild Indian, nor a tame one,” which speaks volumes of the residual mixed identity of the boarding school experience. With many books written, she is well known as the first American Indian Woman to work without an editor, translator, or team of sociologists to convey or contribute to her work. This woman was not afraid of her place as a woman, as a Lakota woman, in the early 1900’s in America [2].
Zitkala Sa ignored the United States threats with their forceful indignities promoting fear and neglect, torture, and assimilation. She persuaded nations of American Indians to exercise their right in the suffrage movement to vote in the Presidency. She advocated for religious use of traditional herbs such as peyote. She rallied for the educational success of children. She initiated the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Indian Rights Association, Indian Welfare Committee, investigated the governmental treatment of Indians and served as president of the National Council of American Indians until her death in 1938.
“She faced, to the extent it was humanly possible, to overcome or sidestep almost all the same problems, although more severe in nature at that time in America, the challenges of educated, intelligent Indian women today. Her life, efforts, and achievements are a fitting role model of intellectual and charismatic political leadership -- at a time when women (much less Indian women) were supposed to have no brains, and be happy, quiet mothers.” [2]
Instead, she advocated for change, taught the children in government-run boarding schools while at the same time instilling pride for their place in the world as Indians, fought for voting rights, human rights, sacred rights, and walked ferociously through all obstacles and became a beacon for Indian rights and an important role of women yesterday, today and tomorrow. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is celebrated nationally during Women’s History Month.
A list of her works includes:
"All she has in the way of literary ability and culture she owes to the good people who, from time to time, have taken her into their homes and hearts...Yet not a word of gratitude...has ever escaped her in any line of anything she has ever written for the public. By this course, she injures herself and harms the educational work in progress for the race from which she sprang....[Among other Indians better educated and more famous than her] we know of no other case of such pronounced morbidness" [2].
Zitkala Sa had been educated since the age of twelve. After university, and while teaching at Carlisle, she evaluated the objectives of the schools she had attended in various capacities. For the remainder of her life she dedicated her time to the improving American Indian issues—trailblazing for the many indigenous women to follow for years to come. She discussed her personal experiences in her manuscript, The School Days of An Indian Girl, published in 1900. She described herself as "neither a wild Indian, nor a tame one,” which speaks volumes of the residual mixed identity of the boarding school experience. With many books written, she is well known as the first American Indian Woman to work without an editor, translator, or team of sociologists to convey or contribute to her work. This woman was not afraid of her place as a woman, as a Lakota woman, in the early 1900’s in America [2].
Zitkala Sa ignored the United States threats with their forceful indignities promoting fear and neglect, torture, and assimilation. She persuaded nations of American Indians to exercise their right in the suffrage movement to vote in the Presidency. She advocated for religious use of traditional herbs such as peyote. She rallied for the educational success of children. She initiated the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Indian Rights Association, Indian Welfare Committee, investigated the governmental treatment of Indians and served as president of the National Council of American Indians until her death in 1938.
“She faced, to the extent it was humanly possible, to overcome or sidestep almost all the same problems, although more severe in nature at that time in America, the challenges of educated, intelligent Indian women today. Her life, efforts, and achievements are a fitting role model of intellectual and charismatic political leadership -- at a time when women (much less Indian women) were supposed to have no brains, and be happy, quiet mothers.” [2]
Instead, she advocated for change, taught the children in government-run boarding schools while at the same time instilling pride for their place in the world as Indians, fought for voting rights, human rights, sacred rights, and walked ferociously through all obstacles and became a beacon for Indian rights and an important role of women yesterday, today and tomorrow. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is celebrated nationally during Women’s History Month.
A list of her works includes:
An Indian Teacher Among Indians Atlantic Monthly (1900) Volume 85Impressions of an Indian Childhood Atlantic Monthly 85 (1900): 37-47.
Old Indian Legends (1901)
Old Indian Legends at Project Gutenberg
School Days of an Indian Girl Atlantic Monthly 85 (1900): 185-94.
Soft Hearted Sioux Harper's Monthly , New York (1901 )
The Trial Path Harper's Monthly, Volume 103, October 1901 .
"A Warrior's Daughter" (1902)
"Why I Am a Pagan" by Zitkala Sa Atlantic Monthly 90 (1902): 801-803.
Old Indian Legends (1901)
Old Indian Legends at Project Gutenberg
School Days of an Indian Girl Atlantic Monthly 85 (1900): 185-94.
Soft Hearted Sioux Harper's Monthly , New York (1901 )
The Trial Path Harper's Monthly, Volume 103, October 1901 .
"A Warrior's Daughter" (1902)
"Why I Am a Pagan" by Zitkala Sa Atlantic Monthly 90 (1902): 801-803.
[1] Hoefel
[2] Strohm
[3] Landis
A note from the author:
My name is Rebecca Balog and I have spent 8 years in human services in various capacities serving domestic violence survivors, homeless victims, MH/MR, drug and alcohol, and Veterans communities. In most recent developments I have committed to racial and human injustice, finding myself and my family history entwined in racial adversity, extreme poverty, and the fear resulting in the abandonment of language, traditions, and nation. For this reason, Zitkala Sa was a choice resonating on all the areas of my personal and professional life.
There are women who have woven my blanket so that I have the protection and endurance to continue forward among the sexual assault, violence, racism and various other abuses forced upon indigenous women and global women alike. It is for my Granny that I stand tall today. I say “I’m proud of it Granny” and yes, this may break protocol- shudder traditionalist but her community forced the Indian out of her. And I‘m not complying. I can’t imagine how hard it was for Zitkala Sa, an Indian woman descending upon Washington with all her European educated poise and naturally Lakota women’s might, to pave the road for all women to make change.
As our other youth, other people of color often forget the ones past who made it all possible for those who forget the changes in the civil rights movements that gave them certain freedoms today, for all the female Americans who do not vote and forget the impenetrable force and inexhaustible endurance women of the women’s suffrage movement gave us the right to vote, for all NATIVE women who have lived in a code of silence among violence, racism, sex tourism, drug and alcoholism…I pledge to the women of our world… follow the road that has been paved before you by women from a different time- a time with lawlessness, murder, cultural genocide, and zero feminine rights. How brave were these women before us? I won’t forget. Zitkala Sa is a HERO!
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