Zitkala-Sa| the Native Voice from Exile
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1993 Zitkala-Sa| The native voice from exile Dorothea M. Susag The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Susag, Dorothea M., "Zitkala-Sa| The native voice from exile" (1993). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 4124. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4124 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY Copying allowed as provided under provisions of the Fair Use Section of the U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW, 1976. Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's written consent. MontanaUniversity of ZITKALA-SA: THE NATIVE VOICE FROM EXILE by Dorothea M. Susag B.A. Montana State University, 1973 Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature University of Montana 1993 Approved by: Chairman, Board of Examiners Dean, Graduate School Date UMI Number: EP34440 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT UnSBftniQn noimnj UMI EP34440 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Susag, Dorothea M., M.A., May 1993 English (Literature) Zitkala-Sa: The Native Voice From Exile Director: Lois M. Welch For the last one-hundred years, linguists and anthropologists from the Euro-American tradition have studied the oral and written literatures of Native Americans to determine the cultural foundations of these people, and also to determine their relative acculturation to European ways. Within the last fifty years, literary scholars have analyzed and categorized both traditional and contemporary Native American literature (as translated from the Native languages and as originally written in English) from a Western-European and non-tribal critical perspective to determine its relevant placement within the American literary cannon. Both of these approaches have provided avenues for understanding Native American peoples. However, they have also contributed to the suppression of the indigenous literary voice by denying aspects of its ethnic, historical, and specific tribal consciousness. In light of the cultural, social, and literary barriers for American Indian writers throughout Euro- American history, the published presence of an early twentieth-century woman writer, Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) 1876-1938, is most significant and deserves appreciation and careful study. To avoid some of the above limitations of the Euro-American imagination, her earliest published essays may be read in their ethnological, historical, and literary contexts: the traditional Lakota tribal culture; the situations of governmental paternalism and forced acculturation and assimilation, both on the Yankton Reservation from 1874-1902 and in government boarding schools such as Carlisle; and the Lakota oral tradition and Western- European literary tradition. Like thousands of other American Indian children, Gertrude Bonnin was a victim of Indian boarding schools. Consequently, she wrote and published from a position of separation from her native home and culture, yet her voice reveals a powerful ethnic consciousness. This ethnological approach to literary interpretation may be useful in determining the way she used elements from the alien Euro- American culture in addition to the power of her heritage to find her own literary voice. With this voice, she transcended her victimization, moved out of isolation and into a tribal community, to tell the story of their near extinction and ultimate survival, and to create a world where ancestral and grieving, oppressed and still-angry voices could be heard. ii PREFACE From over 500 original tribal cultures in North America, with as many as 8 million peoples speaking 500 distinct languages, only 315 tribes and one million Indian people remain,1 the consequence of three centuries of relentless genocide. From out of those countless numbers, we might expect to have heard the stories of their dying, the stories giving voice to the truth of their suffering. But this has not been the case for at least two reasons: their language systems were primarily oral, and the dominant Euro-American culture suppressed their native voices. From the mid- eighteenth century into the twentieth century, thousands of Indian children from across the continent learned to read and write in English. Still, A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff lists fewer than ten American Indian authors—only one woman—from 1774-1899, with no Plains authors appearing until the early twentieth century.^ Her list is neither exhaustive nor complete, but it is important to note the minute proportion of published Indian women authors within the native population. Therefore, in light of the cultural, social, and literary barriers for all native writers throughout Euro-American history, the published presence of an early twentieth-century woman writer must be recognized: Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938). I first became interested in reading and studying Zitkala-Sa after an introductory course in Native American Studies at the University of Montana. Having just been awarded the Christa McAuliffe Fellowship for 1992-93, I looked forward to working on a project to develop a K-12 curriculum in Native American Literature for Montana schools. At the same iii time, I knew I would write a thesis about Indian women for a Master of Arts Degree in English (Literature). Consequently, I looked to study early writers from the Montana Indian community in order to deepen my understanding of their literary foundations. However, the published Indian literary tradition from Montana is primarily male and relatively young, beginning with D'Arcy McNickle's The Surrounded, published in 1937. My study of Zitkala-Sa has satisfied both concerns. Although she was born on the Yankton Reservation in southeastern South Dakota, her Sioux tradition is very similar to the Yanktonai traditions from Eastern Montana, as well as to other Plains tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. Regarding herself as an essential communicator of the humanity and value of her tribal community, Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) spent most of her adult life writing and speaking on behalf of the Indian. However, this paper focuses on her earliest published proses three autobiographical essays, first published in the January, February, and March 1900 issues of The Atlantic Monthly. It has been difficult to know what to call her in this paper. But since she designated Zitkala-Sa as the name under which she published, I will use Zitkala-Sa when speaking about her writing. When referring to her life experience, I will use her "Christian name," Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876-1938). Although this thesis examines the literary power and voice of Zitkala- Sa, I began my research by addressing two questions in order to establish a literary context and critical perspective for this study: "What is Native American Literature" and "How should we study Native American Literature." In response to those questions, I have read numerous iv approaches to the study of Native American Literature which vary from those which examine texts independently from their cultural contexts, refusing to regard any external truth which the text might represent, to the approach which centers the text in a cultural and spiritual context and insists it can not be understood apart from that context. It is difficult to take only one critical position when studying any literature. Nevertheless, my concern with identifying the literary, sociological and ethnological systems or contexts for Zitkala-Sa's essays places me in an ethnographic position. Consequently, I examined the Lakota tribal systems, the Lakota world view, the Lakota definition of power, and the storytelling role of Lakota women before European contact. This information was especially relevant, since Native American feminine power and heritage are closely connected. In the Lakota (Sioux) tradition, women held an important position, and their voices were heard in their storytelling. I also studied the yearly Yankton Reservation Agents' Reports from the years 1874-1902 to determine the situation of Gertrude Simmons' home and tribal community during her youth and during her young adult years. The significant impact of Euro- American influences on the lives of all Native American peoples during this time cannot be denied: governmental paternalism by reservation agents, frequent forced acculturation and assimilation on the reservations and in boarding