Ann Rinaldi's My Heart Is on the Ground as Literary Colonization of Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories

Abstract

Colonization of literature and subsequent literary misrepresentation, like so many other injustices perpetrated by Europeans and then Euro-Americans, is a legacy lasting into present day. Stories authored by members of the dominant culture about Indigenous peoples have created a "reality" that is an appropriation, misinterpretation, and misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in written texts and have become one of several battlefields on which Indigenous peoples are forced to wage war for the continuation of their lives and authentic cultures. Children's book author, Ann Rinaldi, continues this legacy of literary colonization with her text, My Heart Is on the Ground, in which she blatantly uses and perverts the writings of Zitkala-Sa's (Gertrude Bonin) American Indian Stories, a collections of essays published in 1901.