Before there was the MMIP movement, there was Zitkala-Ša

Photo Courtesy: Trista Vaughn/Library of Congress

(TULSA, Okla.) The modern Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) movement began gaining ground in the 1980s, largely relating to public outcry of Indigenous disappearances and deaths from the Highway of Tears in British Columbia. Before long, the movement made its way to the United States. But documents in the Indian Rights Association database prove its roots on Turtle Island go back more than a century.

According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) experience violence at a rate 2 times the national average. In 2016, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men” revealed American Indian and Alaska Native women and men suffer violence at rates higher than any other race or ethnicity in the United States. 

Crimes against Indigenous men and women are nothing new.

Born in 1876, Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, became a waymaker for today’s MMIP movement. She was a champion for young Native women after allotment and statehood drastically reduced their numbers. She stood up for those affected by the struggle of being Native American and women’s issues in the early 20th century.

Zitkala-Ša was born and raised on Yankton Sioux (or Dakota) Nation. During the 1880s, she began attending White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker missionary school in Indiana, where she was forced to assimilate into white man’s culture and stripped of her Dakota identity.

“I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly,” Zitkala-Ša wrote in one of her articles for The Atlantic about her Quaker School experience. “In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.” 

“Since the day I was taken from my mother, I had suffered extreme indignities,” she wrote. “People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's! In my anguish, I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do: for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.”

Boarding school shaped her life and made her want to advocate for other young women like herself. She understood what it was like to have your identity stripped away. Many Native people didn’t have the voice or resources to stand up for themselves without the fear of repercussions. 

She later worked at the Institute as a music teacher, went to college, studied music, and even taught as a music teacher at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. During a trip back to the Yankton Reservation to recruit students for Carlisle, Zitkala-Ša was devastated to find how deplorable conditions there had become. She went back to Carlisle and began writing articles about the treatment of Native Americans at Indian Boarding schools, where Indigenous children were forcibly assimilated. The editors of The Atlantic Monthly didn't like her approach of calling out the federal government’s tactics and fired her.

After returning to the Yankton Reservation again, Zitkala-Ša met her husband Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin, while working at the local branch of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The pair was later assigned to the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah, where they welcomed a son. Zitkala-Ša became secretary of the Society of American Indians. Her criticism of the BIA led to her husband being fired in 1916. The family then moved to Washington, DC. 

With help from her husband, Raymond Bonnin, Zitkala-Ša pushed for better representation in the US government to fight against laws and policies that affected Native communities. 

In 1923, the DC-based Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs selected Zitkala-Ša to investigate the Oklahoma probate situation.

Native American land was separated into individual allotments, and the government delegated "trustees" to handle those lands on behalf of Native people following the Dawes Act of 1887.

In the early 1900s, the US government oversaw Native American land ownership in Oklahoma. It became a rising issue when Native American families began to experience fraudulent claims against their land and their affairs were poorly managed by court appointed guardians This probate system was supposed to resolve the estates of Native landowners who had passed away. Unfortunately, the land would often get sold or designated to another person without the rightful owner's consent, which led to many legal battles about ownership. 

Zitkala-Ša spent five weeks investigating cases of Indigenous landowners in northeast Oklahoma, many of whom were children. Accompanied by Indian Rights Association Secretary M.K. Sniffen and Attorney Charles H. Fabens of the American Indian Defense Association, their explosive investigative report “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians” sent shockwaves across the nation.

The process proved to be a challenging and heart-wrenching experience for her, particularly relating to the cases of three girls: Ledcie Stechi (Choctaw), Martha Axe Roberts (Shawnee), and Millie Neharkey (Muscogee). 

Zitkala-Ša wrote about Neharkey’s highly publicized case in-depth after meeting with her in person.

“After a long private conference with this little girl, I grew dumb at the horrible things she rehearsed, much of which is of official record at Union Agency, Muskogee. There was nothing I could say,” Zitkala-Ša reported. “Mutely, I put my arms around her, whose great wealth had made her a victim of an unscrupulous, lawless party, and whose little body was mutilated by a drunken fiend who assaulted her night after night. Her terrified screams brought no help then, but now, as surely as this tale of horror reaches the  friends of humanity, swift action must be taken to punish those  guilty of such heinous cruelty against helpless little Millie Neharkey, an Indian girl of Oklahoma.” 

Related Story: Investigation reveals dark depths of Indigenous probate crime coverup

The work  Zitkala-Ša was doing intersected many other issues that were taking place within Native communities, and not just MMIP advocacy work.

In 1924, following the publication of “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians”, the Indian Citizenship Act was passed, of which Zitkala-Ša and her husband fiercely advocated for.

A couple of years later, Zitkala-Ša and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians (NCAI). The first Native woman to address Congress, Zitkala-Sa served as the president of the NCAI until her death in 1938. 

The NCAI never replaced their leader after Zitkala-Ša died, and the organization dissolved in 1942. The National Congress of American Indians (also NCAI) was created two years later, continuing the groundwork laid by its predecessor and continuing the mission of uniting tribal people for political advocacy. Today it is considered by many to be the most prominent Native advocacy organization in the U.S.

100 years after “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians” was published, the  Zitkala-Ša quarter became the 15th coin in the American Women Quarters Program by the United States Mint, showcasing the work Zitkala-Sa has done for Native American rights. 

"Author, Activist, Composer" are the words minted on the coin crediting Zitkala-Ša for the work she accomplished during her lifetime. For the modern MMIP movement, Zitkala-Ša is a timeless role model, having laid a strong foundation of how to successfully advocate for Native communities.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).