At the age of eight, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (later known by her pen name Zitkála-Šá) left her Yankton Dakota reservation to attend a missionary boarding school for Native Americans, a harsh and abusive experience about which she eventually wrote a series of articles published in The Atlantic Monthly. Jessi Haley, editorial director of Cita Press (which just published a free anthology of the author’s work) joins Yankton Dakota poet Erin Marie Lynch to discuss how Zitkála-Šá’s sense of cultural displacement impacted her life and literary output.
Mentioned in this episode:
Free edition of Planted in a Strange Earth: Selected Writings of Zitkála-Šá by Cita Press
Cita Press’s Substack newsletter on Zitkála-Šá
Removal Acts by Erin Marie Lynch
Yankton Dakota people
Sugarcane 2024 documentary
Air/Light magazine
Joe Biden’s October 2024 federal apology to Indigenous Americans
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
PBS’s “Unladylike” documentary episode on Zitkála-Šá
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
“Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery” by Zitkála-Šá
P. Jane Hafen’s full PBS interview on Zitkála-Šá
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