American Indian Stories

After a series of fiction stories, American Indian Stories returns to Zitkála-Šá’s essayistic voice in “America’s Indian Problem.” The essay is the book’s most direct example of Zitkála-Šá’s advocacy of the Sioux and American Indian rights more broadly. The essay picks up on themes expressed in “A Dream of Her Grandfather” and “The Widespread Enigma Concerning Blue-Star Woman” about the relations between American Indians and the US government.

Befitting the essayistic form of “America’s Indian Problem,” Zitkála-Šá closes by providing historical context rather than telling a story or legend. She notes, for example, the “suspicions of Chief Powhatan” when the Jamestown, Virginia, colony was being founded in 1607, and the insincere gestures of goodwill practiced by conquistador Hernando DeSoto when he encountered American Indians during his explorations in the 1500s (107). Zitkála-Šá sees these early points of contact as foreshadowing the systematic mistreatment of American Indians by the successive European and US powers that controlled America.

Zitkála-Šá deepens the legal discussion of American Indian affairs by directly criticizing the US government’s treatment of American Indians “as wards and not as citizens” (108). She makes the injustice of this practice crystal clear by calling American Indians “legal victims” of the government (108). She proposes that equality should be extended to all American Indians and notes that this effort will be aided by “the help of the women of America” (108). This reference implies that the goal of acquiring rights for American Indians was closely tied to feminism and the suffragist movement insisting on women’s right to vote, which was surging at the time Zitkála-Šá wrote this essay.

The majority of “America’s Indian Problem,” however, is comprised of excerpts taken directly from a report on the status of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The report details the bureau’s various logistical, structural, bureaucratic, and legal mishaps and shortcomings. Zitkála-Šá introduces these excerpts with some sarcasm, stating, “[l]et us be informed of facts and then we may formulate our opinions” (108). Most damningly, the final excerpt mentions that “in the past the Indians who have acted in self-protection have been killed or placed in confinement,” and that the government’s practice has been to “repress” rather than “justly” deal with American Indians (113). The statement seems directed at Zitkála-Šá, as an independent and outspoken woman advocating on behalf of American Indians, and others like her, while pointing to the root of the problem. Rhetorically, by letting the government’s words speak for themselves, Zitkála-Šá ends the book with a poignant call to action and a vision of steps that she feels must be taken to correct injustices.