The Courage to Speak: Zitkala-Sa and Native American Rights and Heritage

Zitkala-Sa, whose English name was Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a powerful voice for Native American rights and a pioneering Indigenous writer. Born in 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, she was a member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux Nation. Her life's work centered on preserving Indigenous culture while advocating for the rights and citizenship of Native peoples during a time of intense pressure toward forced assimilation.

At age eight, Zitkala-Sa left her reservation to attend White's Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker missionary boarding school in Indiana. This experience profoundly shaped her perspective, and she later wrote candidly about the trauma of cultural erasure—the cutting of her hair, the prohibition of her language, and the deliberate attempt to strip away her Indigenous identity. These early essays, published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1900, brought national attention to the realities of boarding school experiences.

Despite the challenges she faced, Zitkala-Sa excelled academically and musically. She became an accomplished violinist, performing with the Carlisle Indian School band and even playing at the Paris Exposition in 1900. She briefly taught at Carlisle but grew disillusioned with the school's assimilationist mission and resigned to pursue her own path.

Her literary accomplishments were groundbreaking. In 1901, she published Old Indian Legends, commissioned by Boston publisher, Ginn and Company, a collection of Dakota stories she learned as a child and gathered from various tribes. 

Her autobiographical essays were first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1900. In 1921, she compiled these essays along with new work into American Indian Stories, which blended autobiography, traditional tales, and political commentary.  

She also co-wrote the libretto for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), one of the first operas written by a Native American. Her writing style was eloquent and accessible, making her work a bridge between Native and non-Native audiences. Zitkala-Sa's activism defined the latter half of her life. She worked as a community organizer, traveling to reservations to document the poor conditions and advocate for change. In 1926, she co-founded the National Council of American Indians and served as its president until her death. She lobbied Congress, fought for citizenship rights (achieved with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924), and championed Indigenous self-determination.

Old Indian Legends, 1901

Throughout her life, Zitkala-Sa navigated the tension between two worlds without abandoning her heritage. She used the tools of Western education—writing, music, political organizing—to protect and honor Indigenous cultures. She passed away in 1938, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire Indigenous writers, activists, and artists today. Her work reminds us that cultural preservation and adaptation can coexist, and that one voice, raised persistently and eloquently, can create lasting change.

Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians - 1924

The Psychology of Invisibility: Why Some Missing Women Make Headlines While Others Don't

Here's a disturbing statistic that might surprise you: Indigenous women are murdered at rates 10 times higher than the national average. Yet when you think about missing women cases you've heard about in the news, how many involved Indigenous women?

If you're struggling to remember many—or any—you're not alone. While 51% of white female homicide victims receive newspaper coverage, only 18% of Indigenous women do. This isn't just bad journalism or media bias, though those play a role. Something deeper is happening here, rooted in how our brains actually process and remember information. And once you understand it, you'll never see missing persons coverage the same way again.

Your Brain's Memory Trick

Think about this for a second: when you try to assess how common something is, what does your brain do? It searches through your memory for examples. The easier it is to remember instances of something happening, the more common and important your brain assumes it must be. Can't think of many examples? Your brain concludes it's probably rare and not worth worrying about.

Psychologists call this the "availability heuristic," and it's actually pretty useful most of the time. If you can easily remember several news stories about car accidents on a particular highway, you'll probably drive more carefully on that route. Makes sense, right?

But here's where it gets problematic: what happens when the media consistently covers some types of stories more than others? Your brain starts making judgments based on incomplete information. You're not getting the full picture—you're getting a filtered version that makes some problems seem huge and others nearly invisible.

This is exactly what's happening with missing persons cases. When some disappearances get wall-to-wall coverage while others barely make local news, your brain develops a skewed sense of whose disappearances "typically" generate concern and resources.

Two Women, Two Completely Different Stories

Let me tell you about two young women whose cases perfectly illustrate how this psychological trick plays out in real life.

In September 2021, Gabby Petito went missing during a cross-country road trip with her fiancé. She was 22, white, and had been documenting their travels on Instagram. Within days, her story was everywhere. CNN, Fox News, social media feeds—you couldn't escape it. Her face was on every major network night after night. Even after her body was found, the coverage continued for months. Documentaries were made. Podcasts dissected every detail. Her name became as recognizable as any celebrity's.

Now let me tell you about Ashley Loring HeavyRunner. She was 20, a Blackfoot woman from Montana, and a mother of two young children. She disappeared from her family's ranch four years before Gabby's case, in June 2017. Ashley was working toward her future, contributing to her community, and beloved by her family.

Ashley Loring HeavyRunner

Here's the stark difference: in the first five year after Ashley's disappearance, her case generated fewer than 40 news stories total. Most appeared only in local Montana papers. No major network picked up her story. No viral hashtags. No documentaries. Her sister continues to make people aware, but it is difficult (https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/ashley-loring).

Ashley Loring HeavyRunner

Both women deserved every possible effort to find them. Both families deserved support, answers, and resources. So why the dramatic difference in coverage?

The Unconscious Checklist in Our Heads

The answer lies in how our brains process stories about victims. Whether we realize it or not, we all carry around unconscious mental checklists for what makes a "compelling" victim. These templates have been shaped by decades of media coverage, and they create predictable patterns in what captures our attention.

The "Perfect Victim" Template: Our brains have learned to expect missing persons stories to involve young, white, middle-class women doing "normal" things—going to college, traveling with boyfriends, living what seems like a familiar life. Cases that don't match this template don't trigger the same psychological response that makes stories stick in memory.

The "Fair World" Filter: Here's something uncomfortable to consider: most of us desperately want to believe the world is basically fair. We want to think bad things happen to people who somehow invite trouble or make risky choices. Stories about Indigenous women often reveal uncomfortable truths about random violence, system failures, and historical injustices that make some people more vulnerable through no fault of their own. Our brains sometimes protect us from this discomfort by simply not retaining these stories as well.

The Attribution Game: When we do hear about violence against Indigenous women, there's a tendency to focus on individual circumstances rather than seeing bigger patterns. Instead of recognizing systemic issues like jurisdictional problems or inadequate law enforcement resources, we might unconsciously attribute the violence to personal choices or cultural factors. This makes the stories feel less urgent and less memorable.

The "People Like Me" Factor: Let's be honest—we pay more attention to stories about people who remind us of ourselves or our loved ones. When victims seem different in gender, race, culture, class, or geography, our brains automatically allocate less attention. It's not necessarily conscious prejudice, but it's a psychological reality that systematically favors some stories over others. If the majority of the individuals reading the news or finding out via social media are of a different demographic group, it's harder for them to pay attention.

The Vicious Cycle That Keeps Cases Invisible

Here's where it gets really insidious. These psychological patterns create a self-perpetuating cycle that's hard to break:

Indigenous women's cases don't get prominent coverage → They don't stick in public memory → People don't think violence against Indigenous women is a big problem → Media outlets don't prioritize these stories → Law enforcement feels less public pressure → Investigations get fewer resources → Cases are less likely to be solved → There are fewer "success stories" to report → Even less coverage happens.

Round and round it goes.

This isn't just about hurt feelings or media representation. This cycle has real, devastating consequences. Public attention drives political pressure. Political pressure influences how resources get allocated. Cases that remain invisible to the public don't generate the sustained outcry needed to improve law enforcement response, fix legal gaps, or fund prevention programs.

Think about it: when was the last time you saw a congressional hearing about a missing Indigenous woman? When did you last see protestors demanding answers about unsolved cases? The psychological invisibility directly translates into less political action and fewer resources.

When Cases Do Get Attention: Real Change Happens

But here's the thing—when Indigenous women's cases do receive adequate attention, amazing things can happen. Let me tell you about two women whose stories broke through the cycle and created lasting change.

Hanna Harris was a 21-year-old Northern Cheyenne college student who disappeared in Montana in 2013. Her family refused to let her case fade into obscurity. Their relentless advocacy and the attention they managed to generate led to May 5th being designated as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls. Hanna's story became a catalyst that opened national conversations about this crisis.

Family at Hanna Harris' grave near Lame Deer on the Cheyenne Reservation

Then there's Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old Spirit Lake tribal member who was eight months pregnant when she was murdered in North Dakota in 2017. Her case generated enough attention to expose massive coordination problems between different law enforcement agencies. The result? "Savanna's Act," a federal law that improved how agencies work together on missing persons cases involving Indigenous people.

Savannah LaFontaine-Greywind

These stories prove something crucial: when individual cases do receive the attention they deserve, they can expose systemic problems and drive real policy changes. The challenge is making sure more cases get that attention in the first place.

The Legal Maze That Makes Things Worse

There's another layer to this problem that makes Indigenous women's cases particularly vulnerable to being forgotten: the legal system is genuinely complicated when it comes to crimes on tribal lands.

Picture this scenario: a woman goes missing on a reservation. Who investigates—tribal police, county sheriff, state authorities, or the FBI? The answer depends on a complex web of factors including where exactly the crime occurred, whether the victim and perpetrator are tribal members, and what specific laws were broken. Sometimes agencies assume someone else is handling the case. Sometimes crucial evidence gets lost in the handoff between jurisdictions.

Here's a statistic that might shock you: until 2013, tribal courts couldn't even prosecute non-Native men for domestic violence against Native women. Even now, their jurisdiction is limited to specific crimes. Since most violence against Indigenous women is committed by non-Native perpetrators, many cases still fall through legal cracks.

These systemic issues would be front-page news if people understood them better. But because individual Indigenous women's cases don't get sustained coverage, the public never learns about these broader problems that need fixing. It's another way the psychological invisibility creates real-world consequences.

Fighting Back: How to Make Stories Stick

Once you understand how these psychological mechanisms work, you can start to see how to work with them rather than against them. The goal isn't to fight human psychology—it's to get strategic about it.

Tell Stories Multiple Times, Multiple Ways: Instead of relying on a single news report that quickly fades from memory, advocates are learning to create sustained coverage. Anniversary stories, connecting individual cases to broader patterns, using multimedia approaches that engage multiple senses—all of these help build the kind of lasting memory that drives action.

Show the Full Person: The availability heuristic gets stronger when stories have compelling visual elements. Missing persons cases need rich storytelling that shows victims as complete human beings with dreams, talents, and relationships—not just crime scene photos or missing person posters. Social media campaigns that share women's artwork, videos, and everyday moments create the emotional connections that make stories unforgettable.

Build Bridges to Familiar Concerns: Smart advocates are learning to connect Indigenous women's stories to issues that already concern mainstream audiences—domestic violence, rural crime, federal law enforcement problems. This isn't about hiding the unique aspects of these cases; it's about giving people familiar entry points that can lead to deeper understanding.

Control Your Own Story: Indigenous communities are increasingly building their own media platforms—newspapers, podcasts, social media accounts, documentary projects. When you control your own storytelling, you can provide the sustained, contextual coverage that builds lasting memories without depending on mainstream outlets that might not understand your perspective.

Connect Individual Stories to Big Solutions: The most effective advocates understand that memorable individual cases need to be explicitly connected to policy solutions. When people remember a specific woman's story, they're more likely to support legislation or funding that could prevent similar tragedies.

What You Can Do Right Now

Here's the bottom line: the psychological mechanisms that make some missing persons cases forgettable while others become national obsessions aren't set in stone. They're patterns we can understand and strategically address.

You don't have to be an advocate or journalist to make a difference. Every time you share a story about a missing Indigenous woman on social media, you're fighting against the availability heuristic. Every time you ask "whatever happened to that case?" months later, you're creating the sustained attention these stories need. Every time you contact your representatives about funding for tribal law enforcement or support for victims' families, you're translating psychological attention into political action. Share news about support for indigenous crime victims (see the story of Oklahoma's Ida Beard: https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/missing/oklahoma-tribal-citizens-disappearance-leads-to-law-in-support-of-indigenous-crime-victims).

The goal isn't to reduce attention to any victim—every missing person deserves maximum effort to bring them home safely. But we can work toward a world where psychological and systemic barriers don't prevent some families from getting the support that every family deserves when their loved ones disappear.

Next time you see a missing persons case in the news, ask yourself: Will I remember this story in a month? What would make it stick in my memory? And if it's already starting to fade, what can I do to keep it alive?

Because somewhere, a family is desperately hoping that their missing daughter, sister, mother, or aunt won't become just another statistic that disappears from public consciousness. Understanding the psychology of attention is the first step toward making sure that doesn't happen.

Unsung Hero: Susan LaFlesche Picotte (1865 - 1915)

 In July 2024, I had the chance to participate in an event at the National Academies of Science in Washington, D. C.   The topic was how best to clean up the orphan oil and gas wells that can pollute the air and groundwater, and thus improve the living conditions for many people, especially those who suffer from socio-economic hardship.

 

The building was a majestic example of intricate Art Nouveau with stained glass, wrought iron, and lovely nooks and hidden galleries where tributes to the nation’s most visionary scientists could be found.

 

I was excited and inspired to happen upon a tribute to women scientists.  I was deeply moved.  One of the first to really catch my eye was Susan La Flesche Picotte.  La Flesche was the first Native American woman to earn a degree as a medical doctor, returned home to build a system to provide medical care for the people of the Omaha nation, and to institute practices that would dramatically reduce communicable diseases.  

 

She was born in June 1865 on the Omaha Reservation in what is now Nebraska.  Her father, Joseph La Flesche (Iron Eyes) was chief of the Omaha tribe and her mother, Mary Gale (One Woman), encouraged their daughters to get an education. So Susan studied at a missionary school on the reservation before being accepted to study at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey.  From there, she matriculated at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she graduated as valedictorian in 1889.

 

After returning to the Omaha Reservation, La Flesche instituted a number of changes:  She advocated the construction of a hospital and European-style frame houses to provide more ways to keep the patients in as sterile facilities as possible. She was a huge advocate of public health and encouraged families to install screens on doors and windows to keep disease-spreading flies and mosquitoes from entering. She discouraged the use of shared drinking cups at village wells, and was a dedicated physician, traveling great distances to see patients.  She was able to achieve her great dream of having a hospital built in Walthill, Nebraska, on reservation land.

La Flesche often spoke out against the great physical and mental toll that contact with European settlers and the Office of Indian Affairs had taken on the health of indigenous peoples.

 

To me, La Flesche is an inspiring figure for many reasons. The most obvious is that of overcoming the odds to become a doctor and go back home to fight for better conditions and treatment for her people. She never gave up, even when her own poor health made it difficult.

 

While Susan La Flesche Picotte has had the great fortune to have been remembered for her efforts, it is very important to keep in mind that there are many unsung heroes, especially within communities that are under-represented, isolated, and historically under-served.  It is a good idea to take a moment to think about those who made contributions, no matter how large or small, and to thank them.