The Resume

(February 22, 1876-January 26, 1938)
Born in Yankton Reservation, South Dakota
Name means 'Red Bird' in Lakota
Missionary name was Gertrude Simmons (later Bonnin)
Wrote 'The School Days of an Indian Girl' and 'An Indian Teacher Among Indians' (published in Atlantic Monthly)
Published 'Old Indian Legends' in 1901

Why she might be annoying:

She was unusually photogenic.
Her rallying cry was 'Americanize the first American!'
Even after the Indian Citizenship Act she had lobbied for became law in 1924, it did not guarantee the vote.
Some of her works were accused of reinforcing Indian stereotypes.
For most of the 20th-century into the 2000s, she was overshadowed by Sarah Winnemucca (2020 became her 'comeback year' of sorts).

Why she might not be annoying:

She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
She was skilled in the violin and even performed at the White House for President William McKinley.
She underwent forced assimilation and trauma at white American boarding schools for Indigenous children.
Her exposes of the American Indian boarding school system challenged the accepted notion that they were 'for their own good.'
Her book 'Old Indian Legends' was among the first works to bring traditional Indigenous American stories to a wider audience.
She wrote the text and songs for the first Native American opera, The Sun Dance, based on sacred Sioux ceremonies.
She co-founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926, which was established to lobby for indigenous people's civil rights and United States citizenship.
She was one of the most important American Indian activists of the 20th-century.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

• Appeared on PBS' American Masters
• BoyWiththeGreenHair’s Profiles [Series 18]
• Civil Rights Activists
• Fiddlers
• Google Modified Its Logo For My Birthday (Google Doodles)
• I am Religiously Ambiguous
• I Died in 1938 (Ranked: 61)
• I Inspired a Musical
• I Write Bildungsroman
• I'm Buried at Arlington National Cemetery [Virginia]
• Known By a Single Name
• Look at Me, I'm Relaxing
• Look at My Flowers
• Man's World
• Meaningful Names
• Profiles 51056-51250 (Ranked: 51230)
• Rapunzels
• Sexy Native Americans
• Suffragettes
• Time’s 100 Women of the Year [1920-2020] (Ranked: 1920)

Year In Review:

For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 5 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
In 2021, Out of 16 Votes: 25.00% Annoying