Julianne Newmark

Abstract for Book Manuscript:

TENTATIVE TITLE: "Political Visions and Landscapes of Change: The Activist Writings of Zitkala-Sa, Charles Alexander Eastman, and Carlos Montezuma"

Julianne Newmark, Ph.D.

This book project will examine the different paths these prominent members of the Society of American Indians (SAI) took to improve conditions for Native people both on and off of reservations. As well known Native leaders of the first decades of the twentieth century, these individuals negotiated the difficult landscape of federal Indian policy, at times appearing conciliatory and assimilationist and at others hostile to a kind of religio-governmental complex best represented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The texts produced by these activist writers during the volatile nativist climate of the Dawes era pose considerable challenges for current scholars of Native American literature. The central questions that drive this book-length study are also of concern, more generally, to students and scholars of American history and the history of the American West.

This project asks, how do we parse the apparent conflicts, concerning issues ranging from Native assimilation to Native land rights, presented by the textual records left behind by Eastman, Montezuma, and Zitkala-Sa? What is the benefit to present-day scholars of reading Zitkala-Sa, Montezuma, and Eastman as activist writers committed to a political vision marked by hybridity and simultaneity? My book project seeks to answer these and other central questions via analyses of Montezuma’s newsletter Wassaja (on which there is a paucity of scholarly research), selections from Eastman’s eleven published volumes, and Zitkala-Sa’s autobiographical texts and correspondence from her years of service to the SAI and the National Council of American Indians (NCAI).

Zitkala-Sa (otherwise known by her English-language married name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) lived for many years in Utah. Her years in Utah fomented in her a lifelong dedication to activism and lobbying. While still living in Utah, Bonnin began her service as Secretary to the Society of American Indians (her service as Secretary began in 1916 while she was living on the Uintah-Ouray reservation). Zitkala-Sa's years of activist work on behalf of Native peoples, both on and off of reservations, was informed by her years on the Uintah-Ouray reservation. These years in Utah continued to influence her work once she began service as President of the National Council of American Indians (NCAI), an organization formed by the Bonnins and others in 1926.

Carlos Montezuma (who was the one-time fiancé of Zitkala-Sa) was born in Arizona, and while he left the West as a young boy of roughly five years old (in 1871), the plight of Western American Native peoples would long inhabit his activist writings, most notably in his newsletter "Wassaja." Throughout much of his adult life, which Montezuma spent in Chicago, Illinois, Montezuma agitated for the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which he believed functioned to further dehumanize and isolate Native people. Interestingly, Montezuma believed that reservations, for the most part, hobbled Native people and prohibited them from "assimilating" and benefiting from American progress in the ways that "new" immigrants to America and other ethnic minority groups had. Despite this, late in his life Montezuma sought official membership among the San Carlos Indians of Arizona. He dedicated great energy to seeking redress for land-claim issues for the Native peoples of Arizona. Despite his lifelong opposition to reservations in many respects, it was to Fort McDowell, Arizona, that he returned to die in 1923.

The Mountain West was also important to the life and work of Charles Alexander Eastman. Starting in 1894, as a representative of the YMCA, Eastman traveled for several years in the West and Midwest (and, in fact, nationally), to various agencies and Indian schools. The insights Eastman gained during these lengthy travels, coupled with Eastman's experiences during his tenure as agency physician at the Pine Ridge and Crow Creek in South Dakota, would long influence Eastman's efforts on behalf of Native peoples throughout the remainder of his life.

These three activists, whose efforts were known largely through the written documents they produced (ranging from newsletters to published pamphlets to correspondence), drew much information from the experiences of Native peoples who lived in the American West, many of whom wrote to these leaders beseeching assistance. Montezuma, Eastman, and Zitkala-Sa worked diligently to serve what they saw as the best interests of these people.