Gertrude Simmons Bonnin

Born: 1876

Died: 1938

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: Native American

White's Manual Labor Institute 1895; Earlham College

""Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them [schoolteachers] now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it." (wikipedia); “In the land that was once his own – America… there was never a time more opportune than now for American to enfranchise the Red man!”(nps.gov); "I am what I am. I owe no apologies to God or men." (encyclopedia.com); 'Indians are virtually prisoners of war in America. Treaties with our government are still unfulfilled... There is no doubt about the direction in which I wish to go: to spend my energies in working for the Indian race.' (pbs.org); "

— Gertrude Simmons Bonnin

Field of Study: Indian Rights Activist

Institution/Corporation: None found

Degrees & Memberships: Member: Society of American Indians; General Federation of Women's Clubs (1921)

Awards: 1997 National women's History Project Honoree; is scheduled to appear on an American Women quarter in 2024

Achievements: 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;