Life Story: Zitkala-Ša, aka Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876-1938)

Zitkala-Ša was born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in what is today called South Dakota. She was raised a member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux Tribe by her mother, Ellen Simmons, and her aunts. Little is known about her father, other than that he was of French descent. He cut ties with Zitkala-Ša and her mother when Zitkala-Ša was very young.

When Zitkala-Ša was eight years old, missionaries from White’s Manual Labor Institute in Indiana came to the Yankton Reservation to recruit children for their boarding school. Indian boarding schools were part of a larger United States government effort to erase Indigenous culture from the US by teaching Indigenous children how to assimilate into the dominant white culture. Zitkala-Ša’s older brother had recently returned from such a school, and Zitkala-Ša was eager to go herself. For children who had never been off the reservation, the school sounded like a magical place. The missionaries told stories about riding trains and picking red apples in large fields. But Zitkala-Ša’s mother was hesitant to send her away. She did not want her daughter to leave and did not trust the white strangers. But she also feared that the Dakota way of life was ending. There were no schools on the reservation, and she wanted her daughter to have an education. After debating the decision, Zitkala-Ša’s mother agreed to let her go. 

Later in life, Zitkala-Ša remembered that as soon as she boarded the train, she regretted begging her mother to let her go. She was about to spend years away from everything she knew. She did not know English, and tribal languages were banned at the school. She was going to be forced to give up her Dakota culture for an “American” one.

Zitkala-Ša’s arrival at the school was traumatic. The first thing the missionaries did was give every child a haircut. In Dakota culture, only cowards who had been captured by the enemy cut their hair. Zitkala-Ša tried to resist by hiding in an empty room. When the staff of the school found her underneath a bed, they dragged her out, tied her to a chair, and cut off her braids as she cried. Zitkala-Ša later wrote that the staff at the school did not care about her feelings and treated all the children like “little animals.”

Life at the boarding school was difficult, but Zitkala-Ša persevered. After a few years she was allowed to visit her mother. During the visit, her mother encouraged her to abandon school and stay at home. But visiting home made Zitkala-Ša sad. Her years at the boarding school had changed her, and she had trouble fitting into life on the reservation. She chose to return to the school. 

In 1895 Zitkala-Ša graduated and joined a teacher training program at Earlham College in Indiana. She was one of only a few Indigenous students. From there, Zitkala-Ša transferred to the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied the violin. By 1900 she was teaching music and speech at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of the most infamous boarding schools in the country.

What Zitkala-Ša witnessed at the Carlisle Indian School reminded her of her own traumatic education. She watched a new generation of young children arrive on trains and have their hair brutally cut. She saw the staff treat children cruelly and learned that the government paid the school for every child successfully removed from a reservation. She began to question why the school required children to give up their entire culture in exchange for an education. She realized the schools were intended to erase her people’s culture.

Zitkala-Ša channeled her frustration into writing. She wrote about her personal experiences and the customs and values she had learned from her mother. Soon her essays and short stories were being published in national magazines like the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly. In 1901 she published a compilation of her work in a book called Old Indian Legends.

That same year, Zitkala-Ša left the Carlisle Indian School and returned to South Dakota. She took a job at the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs to support herself while she continued to pursue her true passion: writing stories that promoted Dakota culture and values. While working at the Bureau, Zitkala-Ša met fellow employee and Yankton Dakota Sioux Raymond Talesfase Bonnin. They got married in 1902 and had one son, whom they named Raymond.

The family moved to Utah, where Zitkala-Ša found work as a teacher at a school on a Ute reservation where children lived at home. While teaching, she met William Hanson, a music professor at Brigham Young University. With William’s help, Zitkala-Ša combined her love of music and writing. She wrote The Sun Dance, an opera based on her essays. It was the first published opera written by an Indigenous North American. Because many Indigenous customs were passed down orally through music, Zitkala-Ša believed her opera was a powerful way to share her people’s values with a new audience.

In 1916 Zitkala-Ša and her husband relocated to Washington, D.C., where they could more actively fight for the rights of Indigenous people. Zitkala-Ša worked for the Society for American Indians and American Indian Magazine. In 1926 Zitkala-Ša and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians. She also organized the Indian Welfare Committee on behalf of the National General Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Zitkala-Ša’s activism damaged her relationship with the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs.  She wanted to preserve Indigenous culture and believed the Bureau did the exact opposite. Her efforts raised public awareness about many issues related to Indigenous people, including education, economics, employment, health, and religion. Her activism also had a direct impact on government policy. The various organizations and committees she represented helped pass the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The laws allowed Indigenous people to secure the right to vote and gave Indigenous nations more autonomy from the federal government. These acts were controversial in Indigenous communities, but Zitkala-Ša hoped they would lead to positive change for Indigenous people living in the US. 

Zitkala-Ša died in Washington, D.C., on January 26, 1938. Due to her husband’s status as a WWI veteran, she was able to choose to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Like so much of Zitkala-Ša’s life, her final act was also a political statement. She requested that a Plains-style tepee be engraved on her tombstone, asserting her Indigenous identity in a space that is devoted to celebrating the sacrifices of US citizens. Zitkala-Ša identified as both Dakota Sioux and American, and her tombstone continues to assert that duality today.

Zitkala-Ša was lost to history immediately following her death. The man who collaborated with her on the opera claimed that he was the sole writer, and most of her writing went out of publication. It was the activists and historians of the Red Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s who unearthed her work and made sure it was shared with future generations.

• boarding schools: Educational institutions that Indigenous children were forced to attend in order to Americanize.  
• conservatory: A school that focuses on the arts.
• Indian Citizenship Act: An act passed in 1924 that granted full citizenship to all Indigenous people born in the United States.
• Indian Reorganization Act: An act passed in 1934 that decreased federal involvement in Indigenous life and provided Indigenous communities more autonomy.
• missionaries: People who travel around and try to convert people to their faith.
• reservation: Public land set aside for a specific use. Indian reservations were areas set aside by the federal government for the exclusive use of Indigenous communities. Many Indigenous people were forced to relocate to reservations when the US government decided to claim their ancestral lands. 
• United States Bureau of Indian Affairs: An agency of the federal government that oversees all issues related to the Indigenous community.