Journal #6 Zitkala Sa

Liana Laskin

English 48B

"The School Days of an Indian Girl" "The Soft-Hearted Sioux" "Why Am I a Pagan?" by Zitkala Sa

January 23, 2009

“Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them" [schoolteachers] "now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitkala-Sa

Summary:

"The School Days of an Indian Girl" chronicles Sa's life from her childhood with her mother to being taken to an Indian school and being turned into a civilized savage. "The Soft-Hearted Sioux" is a fictional narrative about a man who has abandoned his tribal way of life (at least in the eyes of his parents) to become a Christian; although he tries and fails to save his dying father, he is still sentenced to death for betraying his tribe. "Why Am I a Pagan?" focuses on Sa's "beliefs and counters the trend of showing Indian writers conforming to traditional Christianity" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitkala-Sa).

Response:

I felt that because Sa's story about growing up, from being with her mother to going to school and realizing the world she thought existed outside her village was only a fantasy, was more tragic that it became more personal than Winnemucca's. Since I was born after Indian schools like the one in her story were shut down, I do not know if it is possible for me to fully comprehend what she really went through. Her story made me think of the phrase "stranger than fiction," especially with the white people who would come to her school and think they were doing the children a favor by getting rid of anything that could relate back to their native culture. "The Soft-Hearted Sioux" was quite an odd read for me. I think because of the fact that Sa is ambiguous about whether the meat is human or beef was very disturbing (when I read the story, I thought he had taken meat from a white man's cattle).