land of the free and the home of the brave

In 1948, Native Americans in New Mexico and New Mexico successfully litigated their right to vote. Even after Native Americans were granted citizenship, state and county legislations employed discriminatory strategies and mechanisms such as poll taxes, literacy texts and intimidation, to keep them from exercising their voting rights.

Zitkala-Sa and most other Native American tribal members were not admitted as a citizen to the United States until the passage of the Snyder Act of 1924.

She was an advocate for women’s rights, Native American rights and the preservation of Native life. Zitkala-Sa was a Dakota woman who spent her school years navigating between her traditional cultural heritage at the South Dakota’s Yankton Indian Reservation and assimilation into Euro-American culture at a boarding school for Indian children in Wabash, Indiana. But those same Native American women were still barred from voting in 1920. Anthony and Lucretia Mott to fight for the right to vote. The political power of women in Native American tribes inspired suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.

Land of the free and the home of the brave