American Indian Stories

American Indian Stories (1921) is remarkable for being perhaps the first literary work by a Native-American woman created without the mediation of a non-Native interpreter, or collaborator. Zitkala-Ša vividly articulates her disillusionment with the harshness of American-Indian boarding schools and the corruption of government institutions ostensibly established to help Native peoples. At the same time, Zitkala-Ša's collection of autobiographical essays and short stories charts the progression of the author's estrangement from her Dakota people that her colonial education inevitably fostered. Much more than an indictment against U.S. attempts at Native deculturation, American Indian Stories portrays one Dakota woman's spirited and successful efforts to resist the restrictions she felt in both reservation life and Euroamerican assimilation.