Zitkala-Sa: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know — LONDON TIME NEWS
Zitkala-Sa was a Yankton Dakota Sioux author, translator, musician, educator and political activist who’s being celebrated with a Google Doodle on her 145th birthday. She was additionally identified by the title Gertrude Simmons Bonnin.
Google stated the Doodle, “celebrates the 145th birthday of writer, musician, teacher, composer, and suffragist Zitkala-Ša, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota (Ihanktonwan Dakota Oyate or ‘People of the End Village’). A woman who lived resiliently during a time when the Indigenous people of the United States were not considered real people by the American government, let alone citizens, Zitkala-Ša devoted her life to the protection and celebration of her Indigenous heritage through the arts and activism.
According to Google, the Doodle is designed by Chris Pappan, an “American Indian guest artist of Osage, Kaw, Cheyenne River Sioux, and European heritage.” Google added, “Happy Birthday, Zitkala-Ša, and thank you for your efforts to protect and celebrate Indigenous culture for generations to come.”
Here’s what it is advisable to find out about Zitkala-Sa:
Zitkala-Sa Was Born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota & Her Name Translates From the Lakota/Lakȟótiyapi to ‘Red Bird
Zitkala-Sa was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indiana Reservation in South Dakota, according to the National Park Service. According to her biography on the NPS website, Zitkala-Sa translates to “Red Bird” in the Lakota/Lakȟótiyapi, which was spoken by her tribe, the Yankton Dakota Sioux. She was raised by a single mother after her father left the family, according to the biography.
According to the New York Historical Society, “little is known about her father, who was Anglo-American.”
In her work, Zitkala-Sa. Impressions of an Indian Childhood, she wrote about her childhood on the reservation and with her mother. In one story, she wrote about watching her mother to learn beadwork and how to make moccasins and other items, and imitating her by trading the items with her friends.
I remember well how we used to exchange our necklaces, beaded belts, and sometimes even our moccasins. We pretended to offer them as gifts to one another. We delighted in impersonating our own mothers,” she wrote in the chapter titled The Beadwork. “We talked of things we had heard them say in their conversations. We imitated their various manners, even to the inflection of their voices. In the lap of the prairie we seated ourselves upon our feet; and leaning our painted cheeks in the palms of our hands, we rested our elbows on our knees, and bent forward as old women were most accustomed to do.”
She Was Sent to a Boarding School When She Was 8, Where Her Hair Was Forcibly Cut & She Was Forbidden From Speaking Her Native Language
According to the New York Museum of History, Zitkala-Sa was sent to a boarding school in Indiana when she was 8 after Quaker missionaries visited her reservation. It was there that she was given the name Gertrude Simmons. “She attended the Institute until 1887. She was conflicted about the experience, and wrote both of her great joy in learning to read and write and to play the violin, as well as her deep grief and pain of losing her heritage by being forced to pray as a Quaker and cut her hair,” the National Park Service wrote. The New York Historical Society wrote about her experiences:
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. After debating the decision, Zitkala-Sa’s mom agreed to let her go. She didn’t need her daughter to depart and didn’t belief the white strangers, however she feared that the Dakota lifestyle was ending. There have been no faculties on the reservation, and she or he wished her daughter to have an training.
According to her autobiography, as quickly as Zitkala-Sa boarded the practice, she regretted begging her mom to let her go. She was about to spend years away from every thing she knew. She didn’t know English, and tribal languages have been banned on the college. She could be pressured to surrender her Dakota tradition for an ‘American’ one.
Zitkala-Sa’s arrival on the college was traumatic. The youngsters discovered that everybody would get a haircut. In Dakota tradition, the one folks to get haircuts have been cowards who had been captured by the enemy. Zitkala-Sa resisted by hiding in an empty room. When the workers of the college discovered her beneath a mattress, they dragged her out, tied her to a chair, and minimize off her braids as she cried out loud. Later in life, she wrote that the workers on the college didn’t care about her emotions and handled the kids like ‘little animals.’
In The Schooldays of an Indian Girl, she wrote she was “neither a wild Indian nor a tame one.” According to the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center, “the estrangement from her mother and the old ways of the reservation had grown, as had her resentment over the treatment of American Indians by the state, church and population at large.”
After her time on the boarding college, Zitkala-Sa briefly returned to the reservation earlier than she returned to Indiana, the place she attended Earlham College in Richmond. She would go on to show on the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and studied and carried out on the Boston Conservatory of Music. Ziktala-Sa was a proficient violinist and likewise wrote music.
Google wrote, “This was a common experience for thousands of Indigenous children in the wake of the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, which provided funding for missionaries and religious groups to create a system of Indian boarding schools that would forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. While she took interest in some of the experiences in her new environment, such as learning the violin, she resisted the institutional efforts to assimilate her into European American culture-actions she protested through a lifetime of writing and political activism.”
3. Zitkala-Sa Chronicled Native American Legends & History in Books & Wrote Articles for Publications Including the Atlantic Monthly & Harper’s Monthly
Google wrote in its description of the Zitkala-Sa Doodle, “Returning back home to her reservation, Zitkala-Ša chronicled an anthology of oral Dakota stories published as Old Indian Legends in 1901. The book was among the first works to bring traditional Indigenous American stories to a wider audience. Zitkala-Ša was also a gifted musician. In 1913, she wrote the text and songs for the first Indigenous American opera, The Sun Dance, based on one of the most sacred Sioux ceremonies.”
Zitkala-Sa additionally wrote about Native experiences for a number of publications, together with Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly. She wrote in The Schooldays of an Indian Girl:
For the white man’s papers I had given up my religion within the Great Spirit. For these similar papers I had forgotten the therapeutic in bushes and brooks. On account of my mom’s easy view of life, and my lack of any, I gave her up, additionally. I made no associates among the many race of individuals I loathed. Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mom, nature, and God. I used to be shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for dwelling and associates. The pure coat of bark which had protected my oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very fast.
The New York Historical Society wrote, “Zitkala-Sa channeled her frustration into a love for writing. She wrote about her personal experiences and the customs and values she had learned from her mother.”
4. Zitkala-Sa Co-Founded the National Council of American Indians to Lobby for U.S. Citizenship & Civil Rights for Native People
Zitkala-Sa additionally in 1926, in keeping with PBS’ American Masters, “to lobby for increased political power for American Indians, and the preservation of American Indian heritage and traditions.”
According to American Masters, “Zitkála-Šá became increasingly involved in the struggle for American Indian rights, lobbying for U.S. citizenship, voting, and sovereignty rights. She was appointed the secretary of the Society of American Indians, the first national rights organization run by and for American Indians, and edited its publication American Indian Magazine.”
According to Google, “In addition to her creative achievements, Zitkala-Ša was a lifelong spokesperson for Indigenous and women’s rights. … Zitkala-Ša’s work was instrumental in the passage of historic legislation, such as the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924-granting citizenship to Indigenous peoples born in the United States-as well as the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.”
In 1920, she spoke in regards to the nineteenth Amendment, which granted girls the correct to vote, telling Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party to recollect their Native sisters, who weren’t given suffrage. According to The New York Times, she stated in a speech, “The Indian woman rejoices with you.”
The Times wrote in a January 2020 article, she, “and other Native suffragists would continue to remind audiences that federal assimilation policy had attacked their communities and cultures. Despite treaty promises, the U.S. dismantled tribal governments, privatized tribally-held land and removed Native children to boarding schools. Those devastating policies resulted in massive land loss, poverty and poor health that reverberate through these communities today.”
5. Zitkala-Sa, Who Was Married & Had a Son, Died in 1938
Zitkala-Sa was married to Raymond Talesfase Bonnin, who she met whereas they have been each working on the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, in keeping with the New York Historical Society. They had one son, who was born in 1902 and was additionally named Raymond. She and her household frolicked dwelling in Utah, the place she taught at a college on the Ute reservation, earlier than relocating to Washington D.C. so they may improve their activism.
According to the New York Historical Society, “Throughout her life she actively opposed the “Americanization” of Native American tradition, and her writing continued to have an effect on policymakers lengthy after her demise.” She died on January 26, 1938, in Washington D.C. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 2019, The Journey Museum and Learning Center paid tribute to Zitkala-Sa throughout Women’s History Month. Speaker Lily Mendoza advised NewsCenter1, “We need to know who we are and where we come from, especially in our Native Community. And then to also educate Non-Natives in our community that there are strong women out there from the past that have worked for our rights. Not only for Native people, but non Native people as well.”
Mendoza stated about Zitkala-Sa and her efforts to achieve the correct to vote for Natives, which was secured in 1924, “We weren’t registered to vote. And not being registered to vote really stops us from having any kind of a voice.”
Originally published at https://londontimenews.info on February 22, 2021.
