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- Reviews -
RED BIRD, RED POWER
THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF ZITKALA-ŠA
“In this definitive biography, Tadeusz Lewandowski carefully chronicles the challenges that Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša), her Dakota Nation, and many Native Americans endured during her lifetime. Red Bird, Red Power is a must-read for those interested in this remarkable woman and the history of Native and non-Native relations during the first half of the twentieth century.”
A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff
American Indian Literatures: An Introduction, Bibliographic Review, and Selected Bibliography
“Red Bird, Red Power offers a complex portrait of a woman whose tenacious commitment to Native peoples produced unsettling alliances and political stances. Detailing the missing, misunderstood, and lesser-known periods of Gertrude Bonnin’s life of advocacy and activism, Tadeusz Lewandowski provides an engrossing account of how she and a cohort of Native and non-Native people challenged and worked to change federal Indian policies in the first decades of the twentieth century. This book asks us to heed more fully the efforts of Native activists negotiating a difficult yet pivotal period of Indigenous political formation.”
Susan Bernardin
Trading Gazes: Euro-American Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880–1940
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“[Red Bird, Red Power] is a book for academic readers: advanced undergraduates, graduate students and professors. It is the first published biography of Zitkala-Ša, an important Native American writer of the turn of the twentieth century. It is meticulously researched, very careful in its scholarship, and wide-ranging. It's indispensable for anyone wishing a fuller understanding of Zitkala-Ša, and certainly for anyone wishing to write about her.”
Arnold Krupat
Red Matters
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“Red Bird, Red Power is...the first full-length, scholarly biography of this important Native American writer. Lewandowski argues that instead of taking one of the polarized views of her—either she was a champion of Native American rights and expression or she threw in her lot with whites and sold out her culture—we should more fully acknowledge the difficult conditions in which she fought for Native Americans. Doing so, [he] contends, allows us to recognize that Zitkala-Ša did often take positions on Native issues similar to those of certain white “reformers” and officials, sometimes even engaging them as her allies… Indeed, Lewandowski contends, Zitkala-Ša’s positions and strategies were little different from those taken many years later in the 1960s and 1970s by those involved in the Red Power movement. Although those people may have been unaware of Zitkala-Ša’s work (and Lewandowski thankfully does not overstep and try to assert her direct influence on them), this book makes a persuasive case that she was a woman well ahead of her time.
Lewandowski begins [his] comprehensive, cohesive, and highly readable narrative with Zitkala-Ša’s early years on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota and then proceeds chronologically. Each chapter provides fascinating details about particular episodes of her life, setting them within their larger contexts and establishing their connection to her writings. Lewandowski draws not only on a wide variety of archival sources, such as correspondence by Zitkala-Ša and others, but also on a number of her previously un-examined and under-examined publications. In fact, this is one of the book’s greatest strengths, for almost all previous scholarship has focused only on what Zitkala-Ša published in mainstream publications intended for white audiences. Lewandowski’s presentation and analyses of many Zitkala-Ša essays and poems published in less prominent venues (especially American Indian Magazine) demonstrated to me that they not only deserve to be read by more scholars but also taught to students.
When Zitkala-Ša died in Washington in 1938 at age 61, she was relatively unknown, and her lifelong efforts on behalf of Native Americans were underappreciated. This book makes a strong case that not just because of her early writings but also because of her later political activism (including publications), she and her work deserve much more prominence in Native American, and American, history than she has thus far been accorded.”
American Literary Realism
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“Lewandowski’s portrayal of Zitkala-Ša demonstrates her earnest commitment to preserving American Indian culture, advancing the rights of American Indian individuals, and further positions her as a central forerunner of the Red Power movements throughout the 1970s and beyond. [He] provides a multidimensional biography of a woman whom many agree has been historically misunderstood. ...Red Bird, Red Power will prove a compelling read for anyone interested in American Indian Studies, American Indian women, American Indian activism and empowerment, Federal boarding schools, nineteenth-century American writers, Progressive-era reform movements, and early-twentieth-century US policy.”
Women's Studies
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“Red Bird, Red Power...succeeds in providing readers with a sense of the many levels of complexity in Zitkala-Ša’s own writing, in her political life, and in her personal story. [The book] is useful not only in its particular illumination of details of Zitkala-Ša’s literary-political career but in its establishment of a larger narrative about the cultural circumstances surrounding Indigenous education, anti-assimilationism, and activist movements in the early twentieth-century West and after.”
Western American Literature
Read the full review by Julianne Newmark in Western American Literature, Vol. 53, No. 2, Summer 2018 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press): pp. 257-59.
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“In Red Bird, Red Power, Zitkala-Ša emerges as an ambitious activist committed to protecting indigenous pasts and futures. Extensively researched in local and national archives and rooted in Zitkala-Ša’s own words via letters and diaries, the biography brings together her personal life, political campaigns, and literary career to create a fully human portrait of a controversial and sometimes contradictory figure in American Indian studies. …an essential resource on the Dakota writer and activist.”
South Dakota History
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“This is the kind of material I wish I’d had when doing earlier work on Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin). There is much to admire here…a commendable first biography of Zitkala-Ša.”
Studies in American Indian Literatures
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“Red Bird, Red Power: The Life and Legacy of Zitkala-Ša is a detailed examination of the life and legacy of a Yankton Sioux woman born during the height of violent political and social atrocities against Native Americans in the United States from the mid-1870s through the 1940s. Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) is brought to life through her writings in publications and personal letters. ...In addition, [Red Bird, Red Power] carefully and methodically places Zitkala-Ša’s experiences as a full-fledged leader, activist, advocate, and politician for indigenous rights and justice firmly within the definition of the later-termed Red Power movement.”
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
Read the full review by Paulette L. Blanchard in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2017 (Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center): pp. 174-77.
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“...Lewandowski paints a portrait of a complex woman. ...[He] places Zitkala-Ša’s life within an historical context [and] provides an overview of Sioux history, noting events in Zitkala-Ša’s early life, such as the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Dawes Severalty Act, and the Wounded Knee massacre, while also situating Zitkala-Ša within the larger framework of U.S. history though discussions of Indian military service during World War One, the impact of the Great Depression, and the establishment of the Indian New Deal. The result is a book that deepens readers’ understanding of Zitkala-Ša’s life and Indian activism more generally. Red Bird, Red Power: The Life and Legacy of Zitkala Ša...increase[s] our knowledge and understanding of the complexities of the Indian identity and provide[s] a framework for future scholarship and engagement.”
Reviews in American History
Read the full review—"Complexities of the American Indian Identity"—by Jennifer L. Bertolet in Reviews in American History, Vol. 45, No. 4, December 2017 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press): pp. 614-20.
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“Zitkala-Ša is the most profound and underrated American Indian intellectual of her generation. Scholars have often misunderstood this Yankton Sioux poet, musician, educator, critic, and activist as an assimilationist. Tadeusz Lewandowski’s Red Bird, Red Power: The Life and Legacy of Zitkala-Ša wades into the debate arguing against 'assimilation' and 'liminal' categorizations. Zitkala-Ša was neither an assimilationist like many of her 'Red Progressive' colleagues nor was she a tragic victim of the 'two worlds' paradigm, the failing to negotiate white and Indigenous realities. As the title of the book suggests, Zitkala-Ša should instead be understood as 'a forerunner to Red Power' because she advocated 'Indian cultural renewal and political independence' at a time when the American Indian population was at its lowest and thought to be vanishing into the wilderness of history.”
Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
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“...Lewandowski's biography draws on a rich and extensive archive of unpublished materials, many of these primary sources having yet to be fully discussed and unpacked by other scholars. The author examined hundreds of handwritten and typed letters, lectures, notes, and diaries in order to tell a rich and nuanced story of Zitkala-Ša's interior world and how she maneuvered through challenging cultural spaces. ...Lewandowski's portrait of Zitkala-Ša as a Native intellectual and an activist pushes back against previous approaches that have described Native women's agency mainly in terms of liminality. Red Bird, Red Power enables readers to consider the different sorts of cultural modes, discursive limits, and structural constraints that Zitkala-Ša contended with in a settler-colonial context and the ways in which she maneuvered these spaces to carve out her own ways of speaking and acting to the benefit of not only herself but Native people writ large.”
Great Plains Quarterly
Read the full review—"Expanding Interpretations of Native American Women's History"—published in Great Plains Quarterly (37.2) 2017 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press): pp. 131-44.
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“[Lewandowski] evaluates previously unpublished sources on Zitkala-Ša's life, finding a more sophisticated and complex assessment of her work. He comes to the conclusion that despite all controversy, Zitkala-Ša can be understood as a precursor of the Red Power movement.”
Amerindian Research
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