The Society of American Indians
Zitkála-Šá was a member of the Society of American Indians, a pan-tribal organization founded in 1911 that was one of the most significant Native political organizations of the early twentieth century.
The Society of American Indians was notable for several reasons. It was organized by Native people themselves, rather than by well-meaning non-Native reformers, and it operated on the principle that Native people should speak for themselves in the political arena. Its membership included people from multiple tribal nations, which required navigating the specific tribal identities and interests that sometimes conflicted in a pan-Indian organizational context.
The Society engaged with issues including education policy, citizenship, peyote regulation (a source of significant controversy within the organization, with some members supporting restrictions and others defending traditional religious practices), and the general political representation of Native interests. Its journal, the American Indian Magazine, published debates about the direction of Native political advocacy and about the future of Native people in American society.
Zitkála-Šá eventually became the editor of the American Indian Magazine, a position that gave her editorial control over one of the most significant platforms for Native political thought in the country. She used that platform to publish perspectives that ranged across the political debates of the moment, and she brought her own specific voice — clear, politically engaged, personally grounded in her own experience — to the editorial project.
Her time with the Society of American Indians was not without conflict. The organization’s internal debates about peyote, about the pace of assimilation, about the proper relationship between tribal and pan-Indian identity were genuine political disagreements, and Zitkála-Šá navigated them with her own clearly held positions.