Susette La Flesche
Susette La Flesche called, also Inshta Theumba or Bright Eyes ( Bright Eyes ) (* 1854 in Bellevue, Nebraska, † May 26, 1903 in Omaha Reservation in Nebraska) was a reformer, author and lecturer who spent her whole life for the human rights of North American Indians began. Her father, Joseph La Flesche, the son of a French trader and an Omaha Indian woman and her mother, Mary Gale, was the daughter of an army doctor and a Omaha - Iowa woman.
Joseph La Flesche or Iron Eyes ( Iron Eyes ) was chief of the Omaha, a Native American tribe in Nebraska, and lived as a traditional Indian, but he was convinced that the Omaha should take over the culture of the whites. Nevertheless, he initially trained his children at home according to the traditions of Omaha. However, they later received an education in the Presbyterian mission school on the reservation, where they learned to speak and write English. Susette and two of her sisters were then sent to a secondary private school in Elizabeth, New York. After graduating Susette returned to the reserve and became a teacher at the state Omaha Indian School.
1878 took Susette together with her father, a private trip to Indian Territory after they had heard of the problems of living there Ponca. The Ponca, closely related to the Omaha, had been forcibly relocated last year from their tribal lands and suffered from disease and famine. The prevailing conditions were the trigger for Susettes future activities, with the goal of achieving greater equity for the Indian population. In 1879 she wrote a petition on behalf of the Omaha and published the ruling on the Ponca plight, which was caused by poor decisions of government agencies.
Together with Thomas Tibbles, a reporter for the Omaha Herald, succeeded Susette to free a group of prisoners under Ponca chief Standing Bear, who were captured after their return to Nebraska from the military. Susette was an interpreter in court in the trial of Standing Bear. The court ruled in favor of the Indians, a judgment that caused a stir at the time and represented a precedent for the civil rights of North American Indians. Susette was known under the name Bright Eyes. Shortly thereafter, Susette, accompanied by her brother, Francis La Flesche, and chief undertook Standing Bear a trip to the big cities in the East, among other New York and Boston, to give lectures against the Indian policy of the government, coupled with the demand that the to allow northern tribes of the Indian Territory to return to their tribal areas.
In July 1881 she married Thomas Tibbles and the pair then went soon on an extended trip through North America and the UK, on which they drew attention with lectures and newspaper articles on the plight of the North American Indians. Their work ensured the enforcement of the 1887 Dawes Act ( Dawes Act), which was believed that it would improve the living conditions of the Indians. From 1893 to 1895 lived Tibbles in Washington, DC, where Thomas worked as a newspaper correspondent.
Most of the time the following year, the couple spent Tibbles in Bancroft in the Omaha Reservation, even though they had a house in Lincoln, Nebraska. She died on 26 May 1903 aged 49 years and is the first woman who stood up for the rights of indigenous people.