Zitkála-Šá/Gertrude Simmons Bonnin

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin was born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota. Her mother was Ellen Simmons, a Yankton Sioux, and her father was a white trader named Felker. As an adult, she chose the name Zitkála-Šá, which means “red bird” in the Lakota language.

[Image courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution]

The Carlisle Indian School was founded in 1879. Located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it was the first federally funded Indian boarding school not located on an Indian reservation. Carlisle was founded by U.S. Army Colonel Richard Henry Pratt and had enrolled over ten thousand students from tribes across the United States by the time it closed in 1918. Pratt’s aim was to assimilate American Indian children into Euro-American culture. Indicative of this aim, the school’s curriculum centered on the mantra “kill the indian, save the man.” The school forbade students from using their native language or real names, allowed only Christian worship, and made students dress in Euro-American style uniforms. Many American Indians feel that the policies of Carlisle and the other federally funded Indian boarding schools led to intergenerational trauma which continues to negatively impact American Indian people today. 

The remains of hundreds of American Indian children were buried at Carlisle. Many of the children are known to have died of disease, but the causes of death for some are unknown. The widespread reports of physical and mental abuse at Carlisle led many to believe that these conditions contributed to the death of Indian children. Beginning in 2017 the U.S. Army, which owns the land where Carlisle School was located, began unearthing and returning the remains of the deceased students to their tribes, after years of vocal protest by American Indian leaders. 

[Image courtesy of Wardecker’s Store, Carlisle, PA]

After leaving Earlham, Zitkála-Šá became a teacher at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Zitkála-Šá worked there until 1899, but left after disagreements with Carlisle’s founder, Richard Henry Pratt.

[Image courtesy of Annual Report of the Carlisle Indian School, 1909 Cumberland County Historical Society]

Zitkála-Šá performed at the White House in Washington, D.C. for President William McKinley with the Carlisle School Band. 

[Image courtesy of National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution]

Zitkála-Šá’s experience working at Carlisle, and her own education in the boarding school system, led her to write and publish several exposés about the trauma of the boarding school experience in the Atlantic Monthly. Her articles were scathing, with lines like: “gazing upon the indian girls and boys bending over their books, the white visitors walked out of the schoolhouse well satisfied: they were educating the children of the ‘red man’! but few have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.”

[Image courtesy of Library of Congress]

In 1901, Zitkála-Šá published Old Indian Legends, a book of short stories based on the Sioux oral tradition. 

[Image courtesy of Old Indian Legends]

In 1913, while living on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Zitkála-Šá co-wrote and co-composed the first American Indian Opera, in collaboration with white composer William Hanson. The Sun Dance Opera was inspired by The Sun Dance, a sacred ceremony of spiritual healing then outlawed by the U.S. government. The opera was staged 15 times across Utah. The major roles in the opera were performed by trained white singers in redface, while the minor parts were portrayed by American Indians, causing some critics to suggest the opera furthered stereotypical depictions of American Indians. Moreover, as the Sun Dance ritual was not as common among the Yankton Sioux, others have noted that Zitkála-Šá chose to write about a topic with which she was not intimately familiar.

[Image courtesy of L. Tom Perry Special Collections Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University]

In 1913, Zitkála-Šá began doing field work for the Society of American Indians, an American Indian lead group dedicated to addressing the problems facing Native Americans. Inspired by the society’s mission to improve life for American Indians, she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1917 to dedicate the rest of her life to political activism. While serving as the secretary of the Society of American Indians, Zitkála-Šá edited it’s journal and served as a lobbyist in Congress. In this period of her life, Zitkála-Šá referred to herself as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin.

[Image courtesy of Getty]

Zitkála-Šá’s work as an activist was influential to the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which granted U.S. citizenship and voting rights to American Indians.

[Image courtesy of National Archives]

Zitkála-Šá and her husband founded The National Council of American Indians to continue advocating for American Indians’ rights and representation, focusing especially on enhancing the political power of American Indians. She served as president of the organization until her death.

[Image courtesy of Amherst College Archives & Special Collections]

Zitkála-Šá died in 1938. Because of her husband’s military service in World War I she was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. 

[Image courtesy of Find a Grave]

Three months after Zitkála-Šá’s death, The Sun Dance Opera premiered in New York City.  She was not involved in the opera’s revival, and Hanson took all the credit for the work, only including Zitkála-Šá’s name in the program notes. The 1938 production received poor reviews from the New York press.

[Image courtesy of L. Tom Perry Special Collections Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University]

Carlisle and White’s were just two of the hundreds of federally funded American Indian boarding schools. With schools both on and off Indian Reservations, the overarching purpose was to forcibly assimilate American Indian children, to destroy traditional Native culture. 

The aim of these federally run boarding schools did not begin to shift until 1975 with the passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. This act transformed the stated mission of federally-funded American Indian boarding schools to respect tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Today, the Bureau of Indian Education still operates four off-reservation boarding schools. 

For more information about American Indian boarding schools today reference the testimony of Mark Cruz Deputy Assistant Secretary- Policy And Economic Development Indian Affairs, and this two part series by Wyoming Public Media on the trauma of American Indian boarding schools historically and how they operate today.

[Image courtesy of Oregon Historical Society, Research Library]