Up and Down the River: Advocate for the 'Indian Vote'
"A Tribute to Willful Women" opened Aug. 25 at Artworks. This exhibit honors women of strength and courage, those in the suffrage movement who persisted to see the ratification of the 19th Amendment allowing women to vote 100 years ago as well as those women of strength who have been a force in our community and individual lives. The following is a preview of this exhibit.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an excerpt of an article by Cathleen D Cahill which may be found at womensvote100.org
She is known as the Advocate for the "Indian Vote." Her name is Gertrude Simmons Bonnin or Zitkala-Ša.
Zitkala-Ša was born in South Dakota in 1876 -- the year that the Sioux defeated Custer. Her ideas on women's equality were influenced by her mother, the Dakota women who raised her, as well as by the Quakers who ran the boarding school she attended, the Quakers known for belief in spiritual equality of the sexes. She was college educated and became known as a writer of short stories addressing Native experiences.
In August 1920 Tennessee became the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. The 19th Amendment, however, did not apply to many Native women as at least one-third of Native adults lacked U.S. citizenship and were instead considered wards of the government.
In continuing her fight for citizenship and suffrage, she appealed to the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), an organization of nearly three million members. The GFWC hired her as a speaker and investigator. For three years she traveled the country addressing women's clubs and calling on white women to use their newly won votes to enfranchise Native people.
In 1924, advocacy by Native people like Zitkala-Ša and members of the Society of American Indians convinced Congress to pass the Snyder Act or the Indian Citizenship Act that endowed full US citizenship rights on all Native people born in the county.
Zitkala-Ša died in 1938 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Her tombstone, engraved with a teepee, is a testament to her lifelong struggle to reconcile what for many was a contradictory belief that one could be both a U.S. citizen and a member of the Sioux Nation (or other Native Nation) at the same time.