Zitkala-Sa, who was also given the name Gertrude Simmons by missionaries and used both names professionally, is famous as the author of the first American Indian autobiography that was written in English and not filtered through an editor or translator. She began publishing autobiographical articles in 1900 in such journals as Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, and Everbody’s Magazine, which were collected as American Indian Stories in 1921. She also compiled a collection of Sioux myths, Old Indian Legends (1901), and wrote the first opera written by an American Indian, The Sun Dance Opera (1913). Her nonfiction book, Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians (1924), exposed the theft of Indian lands by the oil industry.
Born on the Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation, Zitkala-Sa was educated at Earlham College and the New England Conservatory of Music. After her marriage to Raymond Bonnin, she moved to Utah and worked for the Society of American Indians, a nonprofit pan-Indian group. In 1916, when she was elected secretary of SAI, the Bonnins moved to the Lyon Park neighborhood of Arlington. Although the neighborhood had restrictive covenants at that time, they only specified that African Americans and Jews were banned from buying property, so by this loophole the law did not affect them. With her husband, she cofounded the National Council of American Indians to lobby Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for land claims, improved health care and education, cultural recognition, and voting rights for American Indians.
She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.