Paying tribute to Yankton Dakota writer, musician, and activist Zitkála-Šá (b.1876), this publication is structured through a series of scores for thirteen contemporary female Indigenous performing artists: Laura Ortman, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Suzanne Kite, Barbara Croall, Jacqueline Wilson, Autumn Chacon, Heidi Senungetuk, Ange Loft, Joy Harjo, Carmina Escobar, Olivia Shortt, Candice Hopkins, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. For Zitkála-Šá is supplemented by texts by each artist and a contextualizing essay by Chacon. For Zitkála-Šá is co-published by Art Metropole and New Documents and coincides with Chacon’s work at the 2022 Whitney Biennial.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A former member of the interdisciplinary art collective Postcommodity, Chacon’s work has been exhibited and performed at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, the Borealis Festival, the 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, and the Pew Fellowship. In 2022 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.