Zitkála-úá is known for
being the first Native
person to write an

opera. She was a
prolific writer,

and very involved in getting
Native people citizenship.

1900, Washington, D.C.
24-year-old Zitkála-úá,

also known as Gertrude
Simmons Bonnin,

performed at the White House
for President William McKinley.

She was trained at the New
England Conservatory of Music,

and so she had a lot
of choices that a lot
of Native women at that

time didn't have.

She was musically gifted.

People were fascinated with her
because she was a performer,

because she was articulate.

"I seem to be in a
spiritual unrest.

I hate this eternal tug of
war between being 'wild'
or becoming 'civilized'...

I am what I am. I owe no
apologies to God or men.".

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin,

was born in 1876 on the Yankton
Reservation in South Dakota,

to the Ihanktonwan
Nation. She later renamed
herself, Zitkála-úá,

meaning 'Red Bird' in
the Lakota language.

I don't think anything
is known about her father
except that he was a

non-Indian, but her mother
raised her up as an Indian girl,

and she saw herself
as an Indian.

"I was a wild little
girl, with a pair of soft
moccasins on my feet.

As free as the wind
that blew my hair,

and no less spirited
than a bounding deer.".

The Yankton Sioux made
a treaty with the United
States in the mid 1850s.

They made peace early on
and they were not caught up
in the major conflicts that

the other Sioux tribes had
with the United States.

There were 60 million
American Indians in

1491. In the census in
1910, there were 200,000.

A lot of that population loss
is due to diseases, measles,

smallpox, and so forth.

For the colonizers who
were greedy for Indian

lands, there were
two ways to get it.

Either by killing people or
by making them non-Indians.

In 1884, at age 8,

like tens of thousands of
other American Indian children,

Zitkála-úá left the reservation
to attend a boarding
school run by missionaries

in Indiana.

The boarding school system
was an institutional way
of trying to erase tribal

identity. You had children
from all these different
tribes thrown in together,

made to wear uniforms, lose
their individual identities,

forbidden to speak
their native languages,

forced to become Christians.

"Like a slender tree, I
had been uprooted from my
mother, nature, and God.

I was shorn of my branches.

Now a cold bare pole I seem to
be planted in a strange earth,

trembling with fear
and distrust. Often
I wept in secret.".

I was taken when I was young to
this very strange place called

boarding school.

The idea was they would
take us from our parents
and break down culture and

history and language and
tradition. My name is
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard.

My real name is Ta Maka
Waste Win, which means
Her Good Earth Woman.

I am a historian and
genealogist for the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe and I

stand up for my people.

Nobody knows who we are in our
own country, in our own land.

We became invisible in
America. So for 35 years,

I've compiled the history
of my people. I've

been trying to heal my
people through language

and culture and tradition
and spirituality.

In 1897,

Zitkála-úá became a teacher
at the Carlisle Indian
School in Pennsylvania,

one of the first
federally-funded boarding
schools for American

Indian youth, founded
by military officer
Richard Henry Pratt.

The idea that Richard Pratt
had was to kill the Indian to

save the man. The way
you look, the way you
dress, the way you think,

the way you talk, the way you
pray. They had to cut that out.

Save the soul inside. It's
tragic, really. Native

people weren't even viewed
as human beings at this time.

After disagreements with
Pratt, Zitkála-úá left
her job at Carlisle,

and in 1900,

published several exposés
about the trauma of the
boarding school experience in

the Atlantic Monthly.

"Gazing upon the Indian
girls and boys bending
over their books,

the white visitors walked out of
the schoolhouse well satisfied:

they were educating the
children of the 'Red Man'!

But few have paused to
question whether real life
or long-lasting death lies

beneath this semblance
of civilization.".

The stories are published.

And the criticisms are
that she bites the hands
that fed her - that

she's criticizing the
boarding school education,

which educated her
to write the stories.

In 1901,

Zitkála-úá also published
a book of short stories
based on the Sioux oral

tradition.

"I have tried to transplant
the native spirit of these
tales into the English

language, since America in
the last few centuries has
acquired a new tongue.".

She works very hard to make the

disparate parts of
her life fit together.

But she also sees herself
as being a preserver
of those stories.

In 1902, Zitkála-úá
married Raymond Bonnin,

another boarding school
survivor from her tribe.

They lived for 14 years
among the Ute Nation on the
Uintah and Ouray Reservation

in Utah, raising their
son and working for the
Bureau of Indian affairs.

There, in 1913,

Zitkála-úá wrote the first
American Indian opera,

in collaboration with white
composer William Hanson.

'The Sun Dance Opera'
was inspired by a sacred
ceremony of spiritual healing

then outlawed by
the U.S. Government.

Sun Dance is common among
the tribes on the Plains.

And it is a dance of personal
devotion and sacrifice.
She is resisting the

denial of religious ritual,

and trying to elevate these
tribal sacred dances and songs

to what she knows is
respected in Western society,

which is grand opera.

The opera was staged across
Utah 15 times by a mixed
Native and non-native

cast. With the major
roles performed by
trained white singers,

some critics suggest
the opera presented
stereotypical depictions

of American Indians.

The opera gave a space to
perform sacred dances and songs

in a public setting. It
preserved those songs.

As she witnessed the
quality of life on Indian
reservations decline,

Zitkála-úá moved to
Washington, D.C. in 1916,

to dedicate the rest of her
life to political activism.

"Indians are virtually
prisoners of war in America.

Treaties with our government
are still unfulfilled... There

is no doubt about the direction
in which I wish to go:

to spend my energies in
working for the Indian race.".

As secretary of the Society
of American Indians,

the first civil rights
organization created by
and for American Indians,

she edited its journal,
and served as a
lobbyist in Congress.

She gives public speeches,
she writes editorials.

And one of her major
causes was to help get
citizenship for American

Indians.

"Now the time is at hand
when the American Indian
shall have his day in court,

and find his rightful
place in our American life.

Wardship is no substitute
for citizenship,

therefore we seek
enfranchisement.".

Zitkála-úá's work was
significant to the passage of
the Indian Citizenship Act

of 1924, which granted U.S.
citizenship to American Indians.

Zitkála-úá understood that
there's these two worlds
that you have to be a part

of, and you want to have
power in both of them.

In 1926,

she and her husband founded
the National Council
of American Indians,

to continue advocating
for American Indians'
rights and representation.

She served as its
president for 12 years.

That to me is like somebody
who has enough empowerment

in herself and enough
integrity that she
didn't let them stop her.

In my culture, women have
always been warriors.

In 2014, they called
me and said, 'LaDonna,

there's a pipeline
being proposed. You
gotta look at the map.

You're the closest land owner.'
And I thought, how dare they,

I buried my son on that
hill. And I said, no.

So we started Sacred Stone
Camp, and asked people
to come stand with me.

People from the whole world
came in a nonviolent resistance.

She would have stood with us,

and she probably would have been
one of the musicians playing.

Zitkála-úá died in 1938,

three months before the New
York premiere of 'The Sun
Dance Opera.' Because of

her husband's military
service in World War I,

she was buried at
Arlington Cemetery.

She firmly believed that
the answer to Indian issues

lay in Indian people themselves.

Indians are still fighting
for their rights - the
theft of Indian land,

missing and murdered
indigenous women,

voters rights - and that's
where her voice is important.

"The American Indian
must have a voice.

Let us teach our children to
be proud of their Indian blood.

Let us stand up straight
and continue claiming
our human rights."