2024-S Zitkala-Sa, NIFC Washington Quarter (American Women)

San Francisco struck approximately 800,000 Zitkala-Sa quarters in the Not Intended for Circulation format, completing the 2024 NIFC lineup. Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) was a Yankton Dakota writer, musician, and activist who composed the first Native American opera and co-founded the National Council of American Indians. Available only through Mint direct sales, the S-mint coin carries the traditional dress and violin reverse honoring her dual artistic and political legacy.

About Zitkala-Sa

Born Gertrude Simmons in 1876, she chose the name Zitkala-Sa (Lakota for "Red Bird") as an adult, asserting the cultural identity that the boarding school system had attempted to suppress. Her mother, Ellen Simmons, was a full-blood Yankton Dakota who had resisted sending her daughter away but ultimately allowed her to attend White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute at age eight. After studying at Earlham College and the New England Conservatory, Zitkala-Sa taught briefly at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School before breaking with its assimilationist philosophy. She published Old Indian Legends in 1901, preserving traditional Sioux stories for an English-speaking readership. Her marriage to Raymond Bonnin, also Yankton Dakota, anchored a partnership devoted to tribal advocacy. The couple spent years on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah before moving to Washington, D.C., where Zitkala-Sa co-authored a 1924 investigation exposing the systematic plunder of oil wealth from Oklahoma tribes and led the National Council of American Indians until her death.