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Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala Sha (Red Bird), was an extraordinarily talented and educated Native American woman who struggled with and overcame severe prejudice toward
Native American culture and women. She worked at creating understanding between the dominant white and Native American cultures. As a woman of mixed white and Native American ancestry,
she embodied the need for the two cultures to live cooperatively. Her works criticized dogma, and her life as a Native American woman was dedicated against the evils of oppression. Bonnin was
born in 1876, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Her mother, Ellen Tate Iyohinwin (She Reaches for the Wind).
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Simmons, was a full-blooded Sioux. Her father was a white man about whom very little is known. In 1895, she attended Earlham College in Indiana on scholarships.
© 2000-2002, ArtemisPress: a division of SRS Internet Publishing #06610736
Bonnin was also an accomplished violinist who studied at the renowned Boston Conservatory
of Music. In 1913, she and classical music composer William Hanson wrote an opera called Sun Dance -- the first and only opera written by a Native American.
After her music studies were complete,
Bonnin accepted a teaching position at the Carlisle Indian School where she worked for two years. She adopted the pen name "Zitkala Sha" and, in 1900, began publishing articles criticizing
the school. She spoke out about the humiliation students underwent there, from being forced to accept Christian religious tenents to being severely punished for speaking in their native languages.
Although music was Bonnin's real love, she felt it more important to fight for the rights of her people through literature and politics.
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