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Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird) was born in 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the mixed-race daughter of a Dakota mother and a white father. Also known by ther missionary-given name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala was a writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles in her youth as she was pulled back and forth between the influences of dominant American culture and her own Native American heritage, as well as books in English that brought traditional Native American stories to a widespread white readership. With William F. Hanson, Bonnin co-composed the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance (composed in romantic style based on Ute and Sioux themes), which premiered in 1913. She founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 to lobby for the rights of Native Americans to attain American citizenship, on which she served as president until her death in 1938.
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Bibliography
Capaldi, Gina. Red Bird Sings: The Story of Zitkala-Sa, Native American Author, Musician, and Activist. Minneapolis: Millbrook Press, 2011.