The Sun Dance’s Significance
The Sun Dance Opera that Zitkála-Šá helped create in 1913 carries a specific significance that is easy to overlook in an account focused on her literary and political work.
The Sun Dance was a traditional ceremony of the Lakota and other Plains peoples that the federal government banned in 1883 as part of the broader assault on Indigenous religious practices. The “Indian Religious Crimes Code” issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs prohibited traditional ceremonies including the Sun Dance, and the prohibition was enforced with criminal penalties.
The Sun Dance remained prohibited until 1934, when the Indian Reorganization Act’s religious freedom provisions ended the ban. During the period of prohibition, the ceremony was practiced secretly, at significant personal and community risk.
Zitkála-Šá creating a Sun Dance Opera in 1913 — taking the ceremony that the government was actively suppressing and giving it artistic expression in a form that could be publicly performed — was an act of cultural resistance in addition to being an artistic achievement. The opera could be performed without triggering the religious crimes code because it was framed as an artistic work rather than a religious ceremony. It was also, in its content and its spirit, an affirmation of Lakota cultural life at a moment when that life was under official suppression.
The decision to work with William Hanson — a non-Native composer who provided the musical technical expertise for the work — reflected the practical realities of creating an opera in a context where the compositional training required for the form was primarily available through Anglo-American musical education. The collaboration was a creative partnership, and the work that resulted reflected both her cultural knowledge and his compositional skill.
The Sun Dance Opera was performed multiple times during and after the period of its creation, and it has been revived in recent years. It stands as an early example of the kind of cross-cultural artistic collaboration that has continued in Native American music and performance arts, and as a specific act of cultural preservation in the context of the suppression that was its background.