From 1897 to 1899, Zitkala-Ša played violin with the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In 1899, she took a position at the Carlisle Indian School where she taught music to the children and conducted debates on the treatment of Native Americans. In 1900, Zitkala-Ša played violin at the Paris Exposition with the school's Carlisle Indian Band. In the same year, she began writing articles on Native American life which were published in such popular periodicals as "Atlantic Monthly" and "Harper's Monthly". Also in 1900, Zitkala-Ša was sent by Captain Pratt back to the Yankton Reservation for the first time in several years to recruit students. She was greatly dismayed to find there that her mother's house was in disrepair and her brother's family in poverty, and that white settlers were beginning to occupy the land promised to the Yankton Dakota by the Dawes Act of 1877. Upon returning to Carlisle, she came into conflict with Pratt. She resented the rigid program of assimilation and argued that the curricula did not encourage Native American children to aspire to anything beyond lives spent in menial labor. In 1901 Zitkala-Ša was dismissed, likely for an article she had published in "Harper's Monthly" describing the profound loss of identity felt by a Native American boy after being given an assimilationist education at Carlisle. Concerned with her mother's advanced age and her family's struggles with poverty, she returned to the Yankton Reservation in 1901. Zitkala-Ša dedicated her life to Indian reform, voting rights and education.