齐特卡拉-萨

齐特卡拉-萨（Zitkála-Šá，1876年—1938年）是桑蒂达科他人作家、编辑、翻译、音乐家、教育家和政治活动家，她是20世纪最有影响力的美国原住民活动家之一。

1926年，她与其他人共同创办美洲印第安人全国委员会，该委员会的目的是游说美国各界并为美国原住民争取公民权利。直至其本人去世前，齐特卡拉-萨一直是美洲印第安人全国委员会的主席。

Zitkala-Ša, also Zitkála-Šá (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird; February 22, 1876 – January 26, 1938), was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. She was also known by her anglicized and married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity, and the pull between the majority culture in which she was educated, and the Dakota culture into which she was born and raised. Her later books were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white English-speaking readership.

She was co-founder of the National Council of American Indians in 1926, which was established to lobby for Native people's right to United States citizenship and other civil rights they had long been denied. Zitkala-Ša served as the council's president until her death in 1938. Zitkala-Ša has been noted as one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century. Working with American musician William F. Hanson, Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), the first American Indian opera. It was composed in romantic musical style, and based on Sioux and Ute cultural themes.

Early life and education

Zitkala-Ša was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was raised by her Dakota mother Thaté Iyóhiwiŋ ("Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind"), whose English name was Ellen Simmons. Her father was a Frenchman named Felker, who abandoned the family when Zitkala-Ša was very young.

For her first eight years, Zitkala-Ša lived with her mother on the reservation and learned the Dakota language. She later described those days as ones of freedom and happiness, safe in the care of her mother's people and tribe. In 1884, when Zitkala-Ša was eight, missionaries came to the reservation. They recruited several Yankton children, including Zitkala-Ša, taking them to be educated at the White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker missionary boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. This training school was founded by Josiah White for the education of "poor children, white, colored, and Indian" to help them advance in society.

Zitkala-Ša attended the school for three years until 1887. She later wrote about this period in her work, The School Days of an Indian Girl. She described the deep misery of having her heritage stripped away when she was forced to pray as a Quaker and to cut her traditionally long hair. By contrast, she took joy in learning to read, write, and play the violin.

In 1887, Zitkala-Ša returned to the Yankton Reservation to live with her mother. She spent three years there. She was dismayed to realize that, while she still longed for the native Yankton traditions, she no longer fully belonged to them. Besides, she thought that many on the reservation were conforming to the dominant white culture.

In 1891, wanting more education, Zitkala-Ša decided at age fifteen to return to the White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute. She planned to gain more through her education than becoming a housekeeper, a role the school anticipated most female students would pursue. She studied piano and violin and started to teach music at White's after the music teacher resigned. In June 1895, when Zitkala-Ša was awarded her diploma, she gave a speech on the inequality of women's rights, which was praised highly by the local newspaper.