Tiny Taps and Noisy Hacks

At the turn of the twentieth century, Dakota artist-activist Gertrude Bonnin, widely known by her self-chosen name, Zitkala Ša, brought attention to the violence of compulsory boarding schools with a series of narrative essays published in the Atlantic Monthly. Existing scholarship focusing on her activism, however, lacks a sustained study of the subversive role of sound, especially music and dance, in her literary and musical projects. This essay aims to address that gap through a study of Zitkala Ša’s sophisticated sonic politics. After discussing the historical tension between prohibiting and appropriating Indigenous sounds, I explore how the boarding school press became a formidable engine for assimilation projects. A close reading in tandem with tracing the reception of Zitkala Ša’s essay “The Indian Dance: A Protest Against Its Abolition” highlights her reverse-gaze strategy while also underscoring how effectively it agitated strident assimilationists. Likewise, her collaboration on The Sun Dance Opera resulted in the project’s defying tidy categorization and denying full disclosure of the ceremony, thereby rendering its own sonic politics of self-determination. Often mistakenly considered a domesticity-centered hiatus in her literary career, Zitkala Ša’s years on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation were a period of creative sonic productivity and constitute a significant era in Zitkala Ša’s developing activism, bridging her younger, serial publication years with the sophistication of the federal-level vocal activism of her later years.

When knowledge goes underground

The passing of the Indian Act in 1876 imposed cultural information poverty within Indigenous communities. Through this piece of Canadian legislation, Indigenous communities were forced to send their children to Residential Schools, and all cultural practices such as the potlatch and Sun Dance were banned. These policies disrupted education practices, and the passing down of information, creating a disconnect between younger generations and their communities. However the Indian Act’s goal of assimilation failed with some of these traditions going underground, being practiced in secret. Through strength and resilience communities today are experiencing a cultural revitalization, and what one Indigenous author calls a renaissance. The paper concludes by sharing ideas on how academic libraries can better engage with their local Indigenous communities.

Introduction

Opening with an extended description of Kiowas’ 1873 Sun Dance, the Introduction establishes two main arguments. First, expansion into Indian lands and encounters with Native peoples prompted Christian missionaries and reformers to cast themselves as “friends of the Indian” who could acquire land and achieve Indians’ cultural transformation through peaceful means. In bringing the Christian God to Indian Country, Protestants and Catholics obscured their role in violent and coercive expansion and constructed an image of themselves as benevolent believers imparting life-saving gifts. Second, Kiowas relied on their cultural practices, including rites for engaging sacred power, to respond to American efforts to reduce their lands, change their way of living, and break their tribal bonds. They continued and adapted older practices, as well as experimented with new ritual options and potential power sources. For Kiowas, “gods” both old and new were central to their struggle to survive and flourish as Americans invaded Indian Country.