“Help Indians Help Themselves”: Gertrude Bonnin, the SAI, and the NCAI

Abstract

“Help Indians Help Themselves”Gertrude Bonnin, the SAI, and the NCAI P. Jane Hafen (bio) Zitkala-Ša, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Yankton Sioux), witnessed tremendous change during her lifetime. Born in Yankton, South Dakota, in 1876, the same year as the Battle of the Little Big Horn, she lived a life of political activism. She died in Washington dc in 1938 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. During the span of her life she was removed from her tribal community into the assimilative boarding school system; she was a teacher, a musical performer, a writer, an employee of the Indian Service (forerunner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs), a public speaker, a major player in the Society of American Indians (sai), and the president of the National Council of American Indians (ncai). She was never a professional historian, yet her personal and published writings chronicle the changing lives and politics of American Indians. She developed a powerful Indigenous voice and seemed aware of the need for complex rhetoric to reach her audience. As Kathleen Washburn argues, the primary documents from this era provide valuable resources for “a wide range of indigenous practices and forms of knowledge” (380). Vine Deloria Jr. asks, “Who really knows what documents, letters, publications and commentaries are really available?” (663). An examination of the archives, especially in regard to the ncai, shows that Bonnin’s rhetorical themes reveal a consistency of resistance, tribal nationali…