In American Indian Stories, Legends, And Other Writings In Zitkala

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The Struggle for Equality and Adaptation Zitkala-Sa was extremely passionate with her native background, and she was adamant on preserving her heritage. When Zitkala was a young girl, she attended White’s Manual Labor Institute, where she was immersed in a different way of life that was completely foreign and unjust to her. And this new way of life that the white settlers imposed on their home land made it extremely difficult for Native Americans to thrive and continue with their own culture. In Zitkala’s book American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings, she uses traditional and personal Native stories to help shape her activism towards equality amongst these new settlers. Zitkala’s main life goal was to liberate her people and help …show more content…

When Zitkala was sent off to boarding school, she realized that in order for the Natives to succeed in this new world, they were going to have to be formally educated like the white settlers. Zitkala uses the character Iktomi as a metaphor to stress the importance of learning, but also to show how his stories apply to the situation that the Natives were in. Iktomi was a trickster character in Native stories, and he had a desire to learn from the Great Spirit. Iktomi was constantly trying to progress forward and understand the lessons that were being portrayed by the Great Spirit, but he kept struggling and falling short of what was being taught to him. Zitkala knew that in order to keep up with this new society, the Native people had to grow in their education and learn to adapt to these new societal concepts that the settlers had introduced to them. If the Natives were to remain in their old ways and not realize the importance of educating themselves, then they would suffer the same consequences as Iktomi did. The government constantly put restrictions on the natives, making it difficult for them to receive an education. But this

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