Bright Eyes & Standing Bear

Bright Eyes & Standing Bear

The Votes for Women catalog from @smithsoniannpg is my jumping off point for so much I didn’t know about Native feminists. “Like other people of color, Native women did not have the privilege of a single issue focus like suffrage.” #IndigenousPeoplesDay #Suffrage100

@smithsoniannpg Susette La Flesche/Inshata Theumba (Bright Eyes) became a nationally-known spokeswoman for Native rights after her role as expert witness & interpreter in defense of Chief Standing Bear, who defied federal law to leave Indian territory and return to Ponca land to bury his son.

In Standing Bear's 1879 trial, a federal judge ruled that “an Indian is a person with the meaning of the laws of the United States,” and that Standing Bear was being held illegally. Bright Eyes & Standing Bear then toured the US to demand Native rights. 

thank you. native americans were not trying to get the vote, since that would be a form of being colonized and give up the sovereignty that they fought to retain. But i wanted to point to their rights activism; they eventually did become voters @CathleenDCahill will give us more!

— Kate Lemay (@kate_c_lemay) November 18, 2019



Thank you for that important clarification. Please do,

@CathleenDCahill

Daily Suffragist

14/10/2019