222. Zitkála-Šá with Jessi Haley and Erin Marie Lynch
AMY HELMES: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I’m Amy Helmes, here with my co-host, Kim Askew.
KIM ASKEW: Hi, everyone! Listeners, you can read the work of today’s “lost lady,” as soon as you finish listening to this episode. That’s thanks to our friends over at Cita Press who publish — (for free!) — the public-domain works of forgotten women writers.
AMY: We repeat: They’re free. Just open up your laptop and start reading. It can actually be a little bit of a problem, Kim, because as I was working on this episode, I got totally side-tracked reading the Cita Press edition of Tender Buttons. (No, today’s “lost lady” isn’t Gertrude Stein.)
KIM: (It’s so easy to get distracted when there are so many “lost ladies,” Amy.) That said, today we are discussing another Gertrude who lived and wrote in the same era as Gertrude Stein. But the writings of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin couldn’t be more different.
AMY: Better known by her pen name Zitkála-Šá (which in the Lakota language means Red Bird) she was born on Yankton Dakota Indian Reservation in 1876. Her autobiographical writing helped English-speaking readers understand how Native Americans struggled to maintain their lands, culture and dignity even as she herself felt culturally unmoored straddling two disparate worlds.
KIM: Her story is fascinating and we can’t wait to share it with two special guests, so let’s raid the stacks and get started!
[intro music plays]
KIM: So we mentioned Cita Press in our introduction, and our first guest today, Jessi Haley, is editorial director there. She previously managed the creative writing program at the University of Chicago and has served on the editorial staff of Chicago Review and Colloquium Magazine. Jessi helped curate Cita Press’s new collection, Planted in a Strange Earth: Selected Writings of Zitkála-Šá. Hi, Jessi, it’s great to officially meet!
JESSI HALEY: [responds]
AMY: Also joining us today is artist Erin Marie Lynch, whose work includes the 2023 poetry collection Removal Acts, which reckons with the present-day repercussions of historical violence. The title takes its title from the 1863 Federal Act that banished the Dakota people from their homelands. Like Zitkála-Šá, Erin is a member of the Ihanktonwan (or Yankton) Dakota and is a direct descendant of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell and Indigenous Nations Poets. She’s also a PhD candidate in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California where she serves as associate editor at Air/Light Magazine. She wrote the forward to Cita Press’s new collection of Zitkála-Šá’s writings. Erin, welcome, and thank you for joining us!
ERIN MARIE LYNCH: Yeah, thank you both so much. I'm really excited for the conversation.
KIM: We are, too. Erin, as we mentioned, you are from the same tribe as Zitkála-Šá…. Tell us about how you first learned about her?
ERIN: Yeah, absolutely. I first found her writings when I was trying to sort of piece together some literary genealogy, or sort of cohort of literary ancestors, for myself from my tribe. Obviously, much of our storytelling and cultural memory is not preserved in literary works, right, or in writing, but because I'm a writer, I wanted to sort of see the other figures from my tribe who had come before me. And so she was one of those. (Also, th author Ella Cara Deloria, who's a really well-known, writer from my tribe.) And that's where I first encountered her work.
AMY: In late October, President Joe Biden delivered a formal apology for the federal government’s role (starting in the mid-19th century) in separating Indigenous children from their families and placing them in boarding schools — harsh and often abusive institutions whose aim was forced assimilation at any cost. I mention it because this awful facet of American history is central to Zitkála-Šá’s story. Can you give us a little more background?
ERIN: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just say first off, you know, kind of about that apology… not to speak for a monolith of Native people, but a lot of Native people were pretty, you know, hurt or sort of like, “Whatever,” about this apology that doesn't really come with any material action, reparation, or, land back, or even, you know, specific efforts to deal with, the trauma that boarding schools still have within Native families. So, you know, “whatever” about the apologies from the U. S. government.
KIM: It’s easy to just say something, but yeah, to do something is different.
ERIN: Mm hmm. You know, it's great that there is at least some acknowledgement on a national scale. Part of that sort of, I think is coming from pressure to follow in the lead of the Canadian government, you know, which has its own sorts of issues with Indigenous people. But that's the first thing I'll say. But yeah, in terms of this assimilation project, what the United States wanted was to have our land, right? So first it was like, “Okay, if we kill every native person, then we can take their land.” And then that sort of shifted in the late 19th century to this more assimilationist project of just, “Okay, if Indians become white people, then, you know, don't have to worry about what it is that we're taking from them.” And so there were a number of different assimilationist projects, but yeah, the boarding schools still have the greatest trace or afterlife today, with Carlisle Indian Industrial School kind of being the model of that’s within the kind of the cultural consciousness today. Richard Pratt, who sort of helmed this school, you know, had worked with Native people, ended up having a very complicated relationship with Zitkala-Sa over time as well, where they're working to train Native youth within Western educational traditions, but also to be laborers, right? So, for example, in my family, those who went to the boarding school were all trained to be mechanics. So ultimately, a form of cultural loss, separation from culture, separation from family and, you know, intergenerational community is so important to our cultures. Um, and then using that, you know, to ultimately [fulfill] that motto of “kill the Indian, save the man.” So for Zitkala-Sa, even for her to write about what was going on in the boarding schools on sort of like a national scale (not just talking about it within Native communities, but laying bare what was going on there for this broader audience as well) was actually a very important and kind of radical act.
AMY: Yeah, because the rest of the country would have seen this as maybe like, “Oh, this is so altruistic. Look at us helping these Native Americans.” And so she's exposing what's really going on there. And they have to see it.
ERIN: And it's so tied, you know, I didn't say, but it's also like so tied to religion, of course, this Christianization, which is not only a loss of our, spirituality, but, uh, spirituality that's connected also to like cultural retention and to cultural knowledge, um, and to preserving those things.
KIM: Okay, let’s back up to talk about Zitkála-Šá’s early years. Jessi, what do we know?
JESSI: [responds with some general biographical information and a sense of what her girlhood was like. Feel free to read a passage from “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” showing this more carefree time.]
Getrude Simmons was born in 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, home of the Ihaƞktoƞwaƞ Dakota Oyate (Yankton Sioux Tribe).
Her father was a French fur trader, but we don’t know much about him (he was apparently known as a “worthless fellow”) and they never had a relationship.
Her mother was Ellen Simmons. She lived through a period of massive change for Yankton people and experienced a lot of hardship and loss. Gertrude was her youngest child.
Gertrude’s older and only surviving brother left home for boarding school when he was a child. Gertrude was raised mainly around women, living a mostly traditional lifestyle that she remembers fondly in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Loss and injustice are ever-present, but so is a strong sense of custom, kinship, and identity.
From “The Coffee Pot,” a vignette where she describes clumsily copying the things she’d seen her mother do to try and make coffee for an elder who dropped by. He’s politely humoring her:
Before the old warrior had finished eating, my mother entered. Immediately she wondered where I had found coffee, for she knew I had never made any, and that she had left the coffeepot empty. Answering the question in my mother's eyes, the warrior remarked, "My granddaughter made coffee on a heap of dead ashes, and served me the moment I came."
They both laughed, and mother said, "Wait a little longer, and I shall build a fire." She meant to make some real coffee. But neither she nor the warrior, whom the law of our custom had compelled to partake of my insipid hospitality, said anything to embarrass me. They treated my best judgment, poor as it was, with the utmost respect. It was not till long years afterward that I learned how ridiculous a thing I had done.
AMY: Erin, this first part of the triptych also shows us her origins as a writer too, wouldn’t you say?
ERIN: [responds in terms of storytelling tradition and learning to be a keen observer]
From the foreword: Above all, I want to situate Zitkála-Šá's writing within Dakota Ohúŋkaŋkaŋ, the storytelling practice we have used for thousands of years to preserve memory, to share the Dakota way, and to combat loneliness and loss. In “Impressions…,” she provides a vivid scene of listening to “the old people" as they told stories of Iktómi, the trickster. As the storytellers worked their magic, she says, "the bright flames leaped up into the faces of the old folks as they sat around in a great circle"; "the increasing interest of the tale aroused me, and I sat up eagerly listening to every word." While not a traditional storyteller herself, Zitkála-Šá learned from those evenings, gathered around that fire. Like a Dakota storyteller, she knew how to create suspense, how to pace a scene, and how to use a story to reveal truth. And she learned from the Iktómi stories, too, to be wary of the forms he might take. In her own writing, Zitkála-Šá's awareness of tone and context can shift, adapting her rhetoric as needed to suit an audience of White suffragists or Catholic bishops. I take these choices as strategy, enactment of her own trickery, using her abilities to outsmart Iktómi in his many guises.
KIM: “Impression of an Indian Childhood” ends with a section called “Big Red Apples.” This is a turning point moment for Zitkála-Šá, and it’s quite a poignant moment. Jessi, can you explain for our listeners?
JESSI: [responds, explaining how and why she wants to leave, at 8-years-old, with the missionaries. Why does her mother allow it?]
What Zitkála-Šá calls the “first turning away from the easy, natural flow of my life” comes at the end of “Impressions,” when Gertrude is 8.
Missionaries visit her house. She’s heard all kinds of exciting things from her brother and friends about what is in store for children who go with them - unlimited red apples, the “iron horse.”
Her mother really struggles with the decision. She thinks that her daughter will need an education, calling the opportunity to be educated “tardy justice” for stealing so much from Native people. But she knows that her daughter will suffer greatly, too.
Ultimately she decides to let her go.
[anyone can say anything else about this first section]
AMY: Zitkála-Šá’s second installment for The Atlantic Monthly was called “The School Days of an Indian Girl.” Here we see her imagined fantasies about life in the East come crashing down in a harsh and scary reality. Everything is bewildering, from being stared at on the train by pale-faced strangers to arriving at the school and seeing a staircase for the first time, which she describes as “an incline of wooden boxes.” She doesn’t speak English. She cries herself to sleep on the first night in this starkly institutional setting. Erin, why don’t you read for us what happens to her the next day?
ERIN: [can read from “The Cutting of My Long Hair” from “Late in the morning, my friend Judéwin until the end of section]
[Erin, you can talk about the significance and intention of cutting their hair… we can all discuss more from these first few sections at the school… not understanding the language, forced to become Christian and the devil in the picture book, the sharp, dark contrast to the serene vibes we got on the prairie in the first article. The ways in which she was “actively testing the chains that bound [her] individuality like a mummy for burial.”]
KIM: She paints a really bleak picture of her time at the school, which we now understand to be harmful and abusive. The lingering trauma is also readily apparent here, too, right Jessi?
JESSI: [Responds and can read: The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by. These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it.]
AMY: [responds] Around seven years after she first arrived at White’s Manual Labor institute, Zitkála-Šá returned home to the reservation for a visit, which you would think would be a joyful reunion, but this part of the book is almost equally anguishing. Erin, what are your thoughts?
ERIN: [responds… explain the conflict she faces when she returns and the anguish of her mother’s wailing.]
AMY: Getting back to Zitkála-Šá’s biography, we learn in this second article that she ends up at college (Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana) and wins a big state oratorical contest despite overt racism against her… (someone strung up a racist banner directed at her.] Nevertheless, Zitkala-Za manages to get the better of the haters. She writes:
There were two prizes given that night, and one of them was mine!
The evil spirit laughed within me when the white flag dropped out of sight, and the hands which hurled it hung limp in defeat.
Leaving the crowd as quickly as possible, I was soon in my room. The rest of the night I sat in an armchair and gazed into the crackling fire. I laughed no more in triumph when thus alone. The little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart. In my mind I saw my mother far away on the Western plains, and she was holding a charge against me.
Erin, her mother is a looming important figure throughout this autobiographical writing, right?
ERIN: [responds]
KIM: So her third installment for The Atlantic, “An Indian Teacher Among Indians,” recounts her experience after college working at another Indian Boarding School, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. During her time there she was actually sent by the superintendent to go back West to recruit more pupils, just as she had once been recruited. She finally reaches another point of no return. Tell us about that, Jessi.
JESSI: [responds… talk about her disillusionment and read from “Retrospection” beginning with “At this stage of my evolution” until “zigzag lightning across the heavens.” You can also mention here why you decided on Planted in a Strange Earth for the Cita Press title. Can also mention how she came to part ways with Carlisle.]
Some accounts of Zitkála-Šá’s life claim that she was fired from Carlisle for the Atlantic stories. But she actually decided to leave before that, as she describes in “An Indian Teacher…”.
She had spent the summer staying with photographer Gertrude Kasebier, who introduced her to a lot of people and took some now-iconic photographs of her meant to showcase her sort of dual identity.
She returned to Carlisle at the end of the summer but soon left, with Kasebier’s encouragement, to study violin with a professor from the New England Conservatory of Music.
While she was there, she started to write about her experiences.
Carlisle’s leaders and teachers and related publications were instantly critical of and bitter about the Atlantic stories, but they still tried to maintain a relationship with her publicly.
She still went on tour with the Carlisle Indian Band as planned, but she refused to denounce what she had written. She responded to criticism in the Red and Man and Helper: “No one can dispute my own impressions and bitterness!”
After the tour and the publication of “The Soft-Hearted Sioux,” the Carlisle machine really went after her in a nasty way.
KIM: Cita’s new collection also features five more pieces by Zitkála-Šá that are really wonderful short reads.
AMY: Oh yeah, shout-out for “Why I am a Pagan.” I thought that was such an amazing meditation on the moments of awe you can discover just being attuned to Nature.
[anyone can respond to this or mention other favorites]
A note on “Why I am a Pagan:” this was later published in American Indian Stories as “The Great Spirit.” The edits reflected Zitkála-Šá’s conversion to Catholicism and a general softening of its critique of Christianity. We decided to include the original version in our collection.
KIM: Writing wasn’t Zitkála-Šá’s only remarkable talent. She was also gifted musically. Tell us about that, Jessi.
JESSI: [responds and can mention performing for William McKinley and The Sun Dance Opera]
She was a talented violinist and a standout of the 53-piece Carlisle band. Newspapers gushed about her presence.
SHe performed at the White House for President McKinley and his wife presented her with a bouquet.
Later, when she was in Utah with her husband working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she met Willam Hansen, a Mormon music teacher who was fascinated by Indigenous cultures.
At Zitkála-Šá’s suggestion, they worked together to write “The Sun Dance Opera,” the first American Indian Opera.
Later Hanson basically claimed authorship and majorly minimized Bonnin’s role. But writing the opera gave her a chance to dig into the struggles to maintain Native identity and culture through music. The story of the opera is the story of a life and culture under threat but preservering.
P. Jane Hafen is definitely one to read on this topic.
BYU’s opera program is including some selections from the The Sun Dance Opera in their recital this year, and a student named Sanae Fujii performed an aria Zitkála-Šá authored at the “Historic Change” event this October.
AMY: So in addition to all of this, Zitkála-Šá was also a strong political activist. Erin, what are some of the ways she fought for the rights of Native Americans?
ERIN: [responds… can also mention her husband here]
Zitkála-Šá and her husband Raymond Bonnin were lifelong activists. Whatever she was fighting for – anti-peyote campaigns, citizenship, legislation, land rights – her ultimate aim was to improve the lives of all Native people.
She joined the Society of American Indians in 1914. It was the first organization focused on Native rights that was run by American Indians. She became its Secretary in 1916 and editor of American Indian Magazine.
She was constantly writing pamphlets, letters, editorials, appeals. P. Jane Hafen’s 2022 collection Help Indians Help Themselves brings together her later writings and pamphlets.
Her husband served in WWI, and she argued for Indian citizenship based on his other veterans’ service.
She was involved in women’s suffrage groups, and her main goal was to get white feminists to advocate for Native rights and citizenship.
At a speech after the passage of the 19th Amendment, she said ““The Indian woman rejoices with you,” but reminded the crowd that Native women still could not vote.
Her efforts influenced the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924; from there she fought continued obstruction of Native voting rights.
Also in 1924, while an agent for the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, she wrote Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes—Legalized Robbery, an exposé that helped trigger the federal investigations chronicled in Killers of the Flower Moon.
In 1926, she and her husband Raymond co-founded the National Council of American Indians, for which she served as president until her death in 1938.
KIM: Zitkála-Šá died in 1938 at the age of 61. She is buried under the name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin next to her husband at Arlington Cemetery in Washington. Erin, what do we make of her legacy today? Is she more forgotten than she ought to be or is there a growing awareness about her?
ERIN: [Responds and can circle back to Cita and the importance of keeping her work in print and preserving her memory]
AMY: Erin, tell us about your poetry collection Removal Acts.
ERIN: [responds and if you’d like you can set-up and read a short poem that lends itself…. (we can prompt by asking if you’ll read) Doesn’t necessarily have to be Zitkála-Šá-related.]
KIM: [responds] Erin, thank you for sharing your work with us and thank you for joining us today for this discussion. We’ve loved getting to talk with you and Jessi both!
[goodbyes from everyone, etc]
AMY: AMY: So that’s all for today’s episode. Listeners, this marks our last full episode for the calendar year. We’ll be back with new free episodes beginning in early February.
KIM: Until then, Amy will be serving up bonus episodes to our subscribers, so if you can’t bear to take a break from us, consider becoming a patron to help support our production costs.
AMY: You can also purchase our bonus episodes individually without a subscription at our Lost Ladies of Lit Patreon page. We do appreciate your support!
KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and KIm Askew.