She collaborated with composer William F. From 1897-99, she played with the New England Conservatory in Boston and played at the Paris Exposition in 1900. She earned a scholarship to Earlham College, where she continued to study music. When she received her diploma in 1895, she delivered a speech on women’s rights. She studied piano and violin and eventually took the place of her teacher when she resigned. When she was eight, missionaries came to the res and took Zitkala-Ša along with several other children to the White’s Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana, one of many such institutions where Native children were forced to assimilate into white American culture. Her mother was Sioux and her father, who abandoned the family when she was very young, was European-American. Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was the most amazing woman you’ve never heard of.Ī writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist, she was born on Februon the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
