Two Women in Washington
In the final years of her life, Zitkála-Šá was operating in Washington, D.C., alongside and sometimes in collaboration with other Native women who were doing political work in the capital.
The network of Native women engaged in political advocacy in this period included figures whose work intersected with hers on specific issues and in specific organizational contexts. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs, which worked with her on the Oklahoma investigation, included both Native and non-Native women who were engaged with Native rights issues through the women’s civic reform movement.
The intersection of Native rights advocacy and women’s civic organizing was one of the more interesting political developments of the early twentieth century. Organizations like the General Federation were vehicles through which mainstream women’s political energy could be focused on specific issues affecting specific communities, and Native women who could work within these organizational contexts used them as amplifiers for their advocacy.
Zitkála-Šá’s ability to work within the mainstream women’s civic movement while maintaining her specific focus on Native rights was a form of coalition-building that required navigating the racial dynamics of organizations that were not always fully committed to the inclusion of women of color on equal terms.
She did this work persistently and without simplifying the complexity of the position she was in.