Product Description

Zitkala-Sa struggled with the conflicting influences of American Indian and white culture throughout her life. Raised on a Sioux reservation, she attended boarding schools that enforced assimilation and was witness to major events in white-Indian relations in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Drawing on personal experience, Zitkala-Sa writes stories and articles that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience. In authoritative and evocative prose, she encourages new thinking about the perceptions, assumptions and customs of both Sioux and white cultures, and raises questions about assimilation, identity and race relations that remain compelling today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294116 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) was editor of American Indian Magazine and founder of the National Council of American Indians, the tribal advocacy group that she led until her death. Cathy N. Davidson teaches English at Duke University, where she is Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. Ada Norris is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at Duke.

Customer Reviews

A must read
There are two short stories by Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) that have greatly effected my consciousness.

"Why I Am a Pagan," writen for the Atlantic Monthly in 1902 is a brilliant essay. It deals with the spritual independence of Native Americans. An independence found outside the walls of a church, as Bonnin herself writes:

"A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan."

Her voice is innocently defiant, because she is a native of a land under the occupation of a foreign government. Only by being conquered are her beliefs, and customs, found to be immoral. To hold on to them in the face of oppression takes great courage.

This theme is continued in another short story "The School Days of an Indian Girl" (Atlantic Monthly, 1900). In this short story, Zitkala-Sa, writes about the experience of a young Native girl going to a distant "White" school. The story hits upon the cultural clashes that occur.

At home the young Native girl is the apple of her mother's eye. Taken from her home she becomes a subject to authority. Zitkala-Sa describes the event of her hair being cut at the "White" school:

"I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities."

Zitkala-Sa's writing is unrelentingly honest, but has some comedic tones in it as well.