Discover Zitkála-Šá

A nationally recognized Native American author and activist, Zitkála- Šá was a vocal proponent for citizenship rights for Native Americans. Born in South Dakota into a Yankton Dakota Sioux family, she thrived on the Yankton Indian Reservation until Quaker missionaries recruited some of the reservation’s children to attend a Quaker manual labor school where she was given the Christian name Gertrude Simmons. Although she enjoyed learning to read and write, she experienced first-hand the damage of having her heritage stripped away.