"Bright and carefree, Zitkâala-Sâa grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering a free education to all Sioux children. The catch: the children must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkâala-Sâa begs her mother to let her go--and her mother, aware of the advantage that an education offers, reluctantly agrees. But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkâala-Sâa expected: the school is a strict one, her long hair is cut, and only English is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, she adapts to her environment--excelling at her studies, winning prizes for essay-writing and oration. Vivid and poignant, this memoir is the story of an activist in the making, a woman whose extraordinary career partially inspired the events of Killers of the Flower Moon."--