Indian Rights Activist

wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity, and the pull between the majority culture in which she was educated, and the Dakota culture into which she was born and raised; 1913 with William F. Hanson composed the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, based on Sioux and Ute cultural themes; 1926 founded the National Council of American Indians with her husband Raymond dedicated to the cause of uniting the tribes throughout the US in the cause of gaining full citizenship rights through suffrage; created the Indian Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs; most influential pieces of political writing, "Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians”, was published in 1923 by the Indian Rights Association & led to the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which encouraged tribes to re-establish self-government, including management of their lands; 1901 she published Old Indian Legends, an anthology of retold Dakota stories; Under the name Gertrude Bonnin, she coauthored (with Charles H. Fabens and Matthew K. Sniffen) the book Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians, an Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery (1924), which exposed the mistreatment of Native Americans in Oklahoma;

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