07/05/2022
Native American women were highly visible in early 20th century suffrage. White suffragists were fascinated by matriarchal power within tribes, but quickly forgot them by 1920. “The Indian woman rejoices with you,” one woman told Alice Paul, but she was quick to remind too that the fight was far from over. The 19th Amendment didn’t grant voting rights to Native women— at that point, they weren't even considered US citizens.
That woman who reminded Alice Paul was Zitkala-Ša (“Red Bird”), who spent her entire life straddling two cultures. Born and raised on a reservation in South Dakota, she was taken by Quaker missionaries to attend boarding school. Later, she wrote on her struggles with identity, the inner conflict she felt between the culture she came from, and the culture she was educated in— the joy of learning to read, write and play music, but also the pain of losing her heritage.
While studying at Earlham College and the New England Conservatory of Music, she began recording Native American oral histories and translating them into English. It was her belief that because many Indigenous customs were passed orally through music, opera would be a powerful way to share her cultural values with a new audience. So in 1913, she wrote the libretto and songs for the first Native American opera— composed in the romantic style, and based on a sacred Sioux dance deemed illegal by the US Government.
She argued that as the original people of America, indigenous people had a right to be citizens and be represented in government with the right to vote. Her relentless work in promoting a pan-Indian movement across all tribes for the cause of citizenship rights led to the passage of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. In 1926, she co-founded the National Council of American Indians, lobbying for Native suffrage rights. Her later books were amongst the first to bring traditional Native American stories to white audiences.
On International Women’s Day, it’s important to remember Zitkala-Ša’s call to remember Native women, and the full range of their political and cultural experiences.
Photo from Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
