Although Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, a Yankton Sioux Indian from South Dakota, died in 1938, she left a legacy of activism for future generations of Indian leaders. As a writer of short stories and poetry under the pen name of Zitkala Sa, editor of the "Journal of the Society of American Indians," and collaborator on an opera ("The Sun Dance"), her literary career spanned the years from 1902 to 1919. Her career in politics took her to Washington in 1916 after. One became secretary-treasurer of the Society of American Indians. In the presidential election of 1928, she and her husband succeeded in getting a plank in the Republican Party platform calling for a presidential commission to investigate and report to Congress on the administration of Indian affairs and guarantees of treaty and property rights to American Indians. Her description of the reality of the corruption and brutality of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) gained the attention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and moved them to political action. She battled the Oklahoma trust estate abuses and, from 1926 to 1938, as president of the National Council of American Indians, she protested B.I.A. dictatorial leasing policies. (NEC)