One Woman’s Fight for Citizenship and Suffrage for Native Peoples

One Woman’s Fight for Citizenship and Suffrage for Native Peoples

Constant Wonder

The Rights of American Indians

Episode: The Rights of American Indians

  • Jan 25, 2021 8:00 pm
  • 27:34 mins

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) was born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota in 1873. As a child, she was taken from her home to a Quaker boarding school. She was a musician and orator, and later she would teach at the Carlisle Indian School. Her writings were published in Harper’s Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly. She was an activist who would travel the US writing about the lives of indigenous peoples. Through her entire adult life, she would campaign for the citizenship of all American Indians, suffrage for women and American Indians, and land and education rights. Guest: P. Jane Hafen, a Professor Emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and editor of “Help Indians Help Themselves: The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša)”