Summary Zitkála-Sá, aka Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, (1876-1938) was born on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota, and left her community at age 8 to attend a Quaker missionary-run boarding school as part of a U.S. government policy to educate American Indian youth with the philosophy: "Kill the Indian, and save the man." She went on to write about her childhood and boarding school experience, and American Indian struggles to retain tribal identities and resist assimilation into European American culture, in essays that were published in the prestigious magazines Harper's and The Atlantic Monthly. Trained as a violinist at the New England Conservatory of Music, she co-composed and wrote the libretto for what is considered the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, in 1913. Zitkála-Sá became increasingly involved in the struggle for American Indian rights, lobbying for U.S. citizenship, voting, and sovereignty rights. She was appointed the secretary of the Society of American Indians, the first national rights organization run by and for American Indians, and edited its publication American Indian Magazine. In 1926, she co-founded the National Council of American Indians to lobby for increased political power for American Indians, and the preservation of American Indian heritage and traditions. Interviewees: P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo), Professor Emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and editor of Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems and The Sun Dance Opera by Zitkála-Sá; Meg Singer (Navajo) who produced The Sun Dance Opera in 2013 and 2015; LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, historian, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and founder of the Sacred Stone Camp, the first encampment of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock, North Dakota.

• Documentary
• Biography
• History