is known
for being the first native person to
write an
opera she was a prolific writer and
very involved in getting native people
citizenship
[Music]
1900 washington dc twenty-four-year-old
zit khalasha
also known as gertrude simmons bonnen
performed at the white house for
president william mckinley
she was trained at the new england
conservatory of music
and so she had a lot of choices that a
lot of
native women at that time didn't have
she was musically gifted people were
fascinated with her
because she was a performer because she
was articulate
i seem to be in a spiritual unrest i
hate this eternal tug of war between
being wild
or becoming civilized i am what i am
i owe no apologies to god or men
gertrude simmons bonnen was born in 1876
on the yankton reservation in south
dakota to the ihongtawan nation
she later renamed herself zitkalasha
meaning red bird
in the lakota language i don't think
anything is known about her father
except that he was a non-indian
but her mother grazed her up as an
indian girl and she saw herself as an
indian
i was a wild little girl with a pair of
soft moccasins on my feet
as free as the wind that blew my hair
and no less spirited
than abounding deer the
yangton sioux made a treaty with the
united states in the mid-1850s
they made peace early on and they were
not cut up in the major conflicts
that the other sioux tribes had with the
united states
there were 68 million american
indians in 1491.
in the census in 1910 there were 200 000
a lot of that population loss is due to
diseases
measles smallpox and so forth
for the colonizers who were greedy for
indian lands
there were two ways to get it either by
killing people or by making them
non-indians
[Music]
in 1884 at age eight like tens of
thousands of other american indian
children
zidka shaw left the reservation to
attend a boarding school
run by missionaries in indiana
the boarding school system was an
institutional way of trying to erase
tribal identity you had children from
all these different tribes thrown in
together
made to wear uniforms lose their
individual identities
forbidden to speak their native
languages
forced to become christians
like a slender tree i had been uprooted
from my mother
nature and god i was shorn of my
branches
now a cold bare pole i seem to be
planted in a strange
earth trembling with fear and distrust
often i wept in secret
i was taken when i was young to this
very strange place
called boarding school the idea was they
would take us from our parents
and break down culture and history and
language and tradition
my name is ladonna brave beau ellard my
real name is tamakawashdewi
which means her good earth woman i am a
historian and genealogist for the sunny
rock sioux tribe
and i stand up for my people
[Music]
nobody knows who we are in our own
country in our own land
we became invisible in america so
for 35 years i've compiled the history
of my people
i've been trying to heal my people
through language and culture and
tradition and spirituality
in 1897 sid kalashaw became a teacher at
the carlisle
indian school in pennsylvania one of the
first federally funded boarding schools
for american indian youth
founded by military officer richard
henry pratt
the idea that richard pratt had was to
kill the indian to save the man
the way you look the way you dress the
way you think the way you talk
the way you pray they had to cut that
out save the soul
inside it's tragic really
[Music]
native people weren't even viewed as
human beings at this time
after disagreements with pratt sitka
shaw left her job at carlisle
and in 1900 published several exposes
about the trauma of the boarding school
experience in the atlantic monthly
gazing upon the indian girls and boys
bending over their books
the white visitors walked out of the
schoolhouse well satisfied
they were educating the children of the
red man
but few have paused to question whether
real life or
long-lasting death lies beneath this
semblance
of civilization
the stories are published and the
criticisms are that she bites the hands
that fed her
that she's criticizing the boarding
school education which
educated her to write the stories in
1901
sitka shah also published a book of
short stories based on the sioux
oral tradition i have tried to
transplant the native spirit of these
tales into the english language
since america in the last few centuries
has acquired a new tongue
she works very hard to
make the disparate parts of her life fit
together
but she also sees herself as being a
preserver
of those stories in 1902
zidka shaw married raymond bonan another
boarding school survivor from her tribe
they lived for 14 years among the ute
nation on the uinta and uray reservation
in utah
raising their son and working for the
bureau of indian affairs
[Music]
there in 1913 zit kalashaw wrote the
first
american indian opera in collaboration
with white composer william hanson
the sundance opera was inspired by a
sacred ceremony of spiritual healing
then outlawed by the us government
sundance
is common among the tribes on the plains
and it is
a dance of personal devotion and
sacrifice
she is resisting the denial of religious
ritual
and trying to elevate these tribal
sacred dances and songs
to what she knows is respected in
western society
which is grand opera
the opera was staged across utah 15
times
by a mixed native and non-native cast
with the major roles performed by
trained white singers
some critics suggest the opera presented
stereotypical depictions
of american indians
the opera gave a space to perform
sacred dances and songs in a public
setting
it preserved those songs
as she witnessed the quality of life on
indian reservation's decline
zitka shaw moved to washington dc in
1916
to dedicate the rest of her life to
political activism
indians are virtually prisoners of war
in america
treaties with our government are still
unfulfilled
there is no doubt about the direction in
which i wish to go
to spend my energies in working for the
indian race
as secretary of the society of american
indians the first civil rights
organization created by
and for american indians she edited its
journal
and served as a lobbyist in congress
she gives public speeches she writes
editorials
and one of her major causes was to help
get citizenship
for american indians
now the time is at hand when the
american indian shall have his day in
court
and find his rightful place in our
american life
wardship is no substitute for
citizenship therefore
we seek enfranchisement
zid khalisha's work was significant to
the passage of the indian citizenship
act of 1924
which granted u.s citizenship to
american indians
as akala shah understood that there's
these two worlds
that you have to be a part of and you
want to have power in both of them
in 1926 she and her husband founded the
national council of american indians
to continue advocating for american
indians rights and representation
she served as his president for 12 years
that to me is like
somebody who has enough empowerment in
herself
and enough integrity that she didn't let
them stop her
in my culture women have always been
warriors in 2014
they called me and said ladonna there's
a pipeline being
posed you gotta look at the map you're
the closest landowner
i thought how dare they i buried my son
on that hill
and i said no so we started sacred stone
camp
and asked people to come stand with me
people from the whole world came in a
non-violent resistance
she would have stood with us and she
probably would have been one of the
musicians playing
sid kalashaw died in 1938 three months
before the new york premiere of the
sundance opera
because of her husband's military
service in world war one
she was buried at arlington cemetery
she firmly believed that the answer to
indian issues lay in indian people
themselves
indians are still fighting for their
rights the theft of indian land
missing and murdered indigenous women
voters rights
and that's why her voice is important
the american indian must have a voice
let us teach our children to be proud of
their indian blood
let us stand up straight and continue
claiming our human rights
[Music]
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