11x14 oil on panel
framed with gilded floater frame
 
Zitkala-Sa (Lakota for Red Bird), also known by her missionary-given and later married name - Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Yankton Dakota political activist; writer, editor, musician, educator. She wrote several works chronicaling her struggles with cultural identity and the pull between majority culture she was educated within, and the Dakota culture in which she was born and raised, she was one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century.