Zitkala-Sa - Political Activism

Political Activism

Zitkala-Ša was highly politically active throughout most of her adult life, in addition to and often in conjunction with her literary career. During her time on the Uintah-Ouray reservation in Utah she joined the Society of American Indians, a progressive group formed in 1911 and dedicated to preserving the Native American way of life while lobbying for their right to full American citizenship. Zitkala-Ša served as the SAI's secretary beginning in 1916 and edited its journal American Indian Magazine from 1918 to 1919. The SAI and Zitkala-Ša have since been criticized as misguided in their approach, their strong advocacy of citizenship and employment rights for Native Americans contributing to the further deterioration of cultural identity as Native Americans were brought more and more into mainstream American society.

Part of her duty as the secretary for the SAI was to correspond with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Increasingly, however, Zitkala-Ša began to criticize the corrupt practices of the BIA, such as their prohibition of the use of native languages and practices within the school systems set up for Native American children and reported incidences of abuse resulting from children's refusal to pray in the Christian manner. Her sharp criticism of the BIA resulted in the dismissal of her husband from it in 1916, following which the couple relocated with their son to Washington D.C.

From Washington Zitkala-Ša began lecturing nation-wide on behalf of the SAI to promote the cultural and tribal identity of Native Americans. During the 1920s she devoted a great amount of effort to promoting a pan-Indian movement that would unite all of America's tribes in the cause of lobbying for citizenship rights and in 1924 saw the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act which granted citizenship rights to many though not all indigenous peoples. In 1926 she and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians, dedicated to the cause of uniting the tribes throughout the U.S. in the cause of gaining full citizenship rights through suffrage. From 1926 until her death in 1938 Zitkala-Ša would serve as president, major fundraiser, and speaker for the NCAI, running the organization almost single-handedly, though her efforts were largely disregarded when the organization was revived in 1944 under male leadership.

Zitkala-Ša was also active in the 1920s in the movement for women's rights, joining the General Federation of Women's Clubs in 1921, a grassroots organization dedicated to diversity in its membership and to maintaining a public voice for women's concerns. Through the GFWC she created the Indian Welfare Committee in 1924, launching a government investigation into the exploitation of Native Americans in Oklahoma and the attempts being made to defraud them of drilling rights to their oil-rich lands. This investigation led in to the publication of an article that Zitkala-Ša co-authored, entitled "Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribe-Legalized Robbery". The article exposed several corporations that had robbed and even murdered Native Americans in Oklahoma to gain access to their lands and was pivotal in moving the government in 1934 to adopt the Indian Reorganization Act, which returned the management of their lands to Native Americans.

In her work for the NCAI in 1924 Zitkala-Ša ran a voter-registration drive among Native Americans in order to raise their support for the Curtis Bill, which was subsequently passed by Congress. Though the bill granted Native Americans citizenship it did not grant them the right to vote and Zitkala-Ša continued to work for civil rights and better access to health care and education for Native Americans up until her death in 1938.