Zitkala-Ša, "Red Bird"

Zitkala-Ša (“Red Bird”), given the name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin by boarding-school missionaries, was a Sioux crusader who wrote several books, and also was a musician who composed who the first opera by a Native American. She campaigned for the reform of the Indian policies in the Unites States.

 

The "glassy blue eyes" of white men stared at the Indian children on their journey to Indiana; "the snow still covered the ground, and the trees were bare" when she arrived at the missionaries' boarding school; and she found Earlham College students to be "a cold race whose hearts were frozen hard with prejudice.