Home › Authors › Zitkala-Ša
Zitkala-Ša Quotes
1876–1938 United States
Zitkala-Ša (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird) (February 22, 1876 – January 26, 1938), also known by her missionary and married names Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. She 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.
United States Activists Authors Autobiographers Editors Also known as: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin,
Random Zitkala-Ša quote
13 quotes
Use the words that come to you, that which is in the heart and mind.
Speech (1919)
We must put our thoughts into practice every day in the most complex business matter, in the most simple home duty.
Speech (1919)
My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand.
American Indian Stories (1921)
Today the Indian is pressed almost to the farther sea. Does that sea symbolize his death?
Speech (1896)
To take the life of a nation during the slow march of centuries seems not a lighter crime than to crush it instantly with one fatal blow.
Speech (1896)
Shall we think or shall somebody think for us? We are on this earth to think and do the best we can according to our light.
Speech (1919)
We clasp the warm hand of friendship everywhere. From honest hearts and sincere lips we hear the hearty welcome and Godspeed.
Speech (1896)
With the strong, happy sense that both great and small are so surely enfolded in His magnitude that, without a miss, each has his allotted individual ground of opportunities, I am buoyant with good nature.
American Indian Stories (1921)
Quick to string his bow for vengeance; ready to bury the hatchet or smoke the pipe of peace; never was he first to break a treaty or known to betray a friend with whom he had eaten salt.
Speech (1896)
The greatest gift in life is consciousness. Not positions, not the dollar, but that the Almighty Spirit gives us life and we have a rational mind with which to see all the wonders of the universe.
Speech (1919)
In this fashion many have passed idly through the Indian schools during the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North American Indian. But few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.
Poets sing of a coming federation of the world, and we applaud. Idealists dream that in this commonwealth of all humanity the divine spark in man shall be the only test of citizenship, and we think of their dream and future history.
Speech (1896)
our little ones — they are our future hope. Our children!
Speech (1919)
Topics Zitkala-Ša is quoted on
Works