Let us develop our powers by thinking and acting for ourselves. That is the way we grow. We have been told organization is necessary to bring about r… - Zitkala-Sa

After my first three years of school, I roamed again in the Western country through four strange summers. During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice of human aid. My brother, being almost ten years my senior, did not quite understand my feelings. My mother had never gone inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deporable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East, and the unsatisfactory "teenth" in a girl's years. (VI: FOUR STRANGE SUMMERS)

Leaving my mother, I returned to the school in the East. As months passed over me, I slowly comprehended that the large army of white teachers in Indian schools had a larger missionary creed than I had suspected. It was one which included self-preservation quite as much as Indian education.

We must put our thoughts into practice every day in the most complex business matter, in the most simple home duty.