A Council of Dolls

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of racism, religious discrimination, and death.



Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls, is a Yanktonai Dakhóta member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, also known as Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakhóta. Though Power was born and raised in Chicago, many of the stories she writes about in the novel are inspired by her mother’s and grandmother’s experiences growing up on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The novel also alludes broadly to the history and culture of the Dakhóta and Lakhóta people, focusing on how these forces impact individual women over three generations. 

The Sioux, or Oceti Sakowin are a group of Indigenous American tribes from the Great Plains of North America that comprise three main subcultures: the Eastern Dakhóta, Western Dakhóta, and Lakhóta people. The alliances between the Dakhóta and Lakhóta bands inform the Dakhóta name, which translates to “friend” or “ally.” The bands each have their own dialects, which are mutually intelligible variants of their common language, known as either Dakhóta-Lakhóta or Sioux. Two subgroups make up the Western Dakhóta people. One, the Yanktonai, resides in the northern part of Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota’s Upper Missouri River area.

The Yanktonai Dakhóta people’s early history is important to understanding the conflicts depicted in the novel between them and the US government. They originally lived in Minnesota but ceded much of their land in treaties signed with the United States in the 1800s. The US government failed to make treaty payments and supply food as promised. This led the Dakhóta to attack white settlements in the Minnesota River Valley, an uprising that lasted five weeks and came to be known as the Dakhóta War of 1862. The US government responded by exiling the Dakhóta from Minnesota and sending them to reservations in Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Canada. Thirty-eight Dakhóta men were later tried and executed for their role in the war, an event cited in the novel as one of the reasons Cora is critical of President Abraham Lincoln. The US Army also retaliated the following year in an attack that killed 150 to 300 Sioux and came to be known by the Sioux as the Whitestone Hill Massacre.

In addition to the Yanktonai Dakhóta, Standing Rock Indian Reservation is also home to the Hunkpapa Lakhóta, the group led by Sitting Bull before he was killed there in 1890. Cora’s experience of Sitting Bull’s death is inspired by the author’s own grandmother, whose father brought her to town at age three to investigate rumors that Sitting Bull had been killed. Little Soldier, a Sitting Bull loyalist and friend to Cora’s family in the novel, is a real historical figure as well as a close friend of the author’s ancestors who provided them with details in the wake of their leader’s arrest and death.

Major James McLaughlin of the United States Indian Service feared Sitting Bull’s influence among the Hunkpapa Lakhóta people, especially given the rising popularity of the Ghost Dance movement, a spiritual revival among Indigenous American tribes. It featured performances of the Ghost Dance, which adherents believed would bring them new prosperity and rid their lands of white invaders. The US government saw the movement as a threat with the potential to incite an uprising. On December 15, 1890, McLaughlin ordered Standing Rock’s Indian Agency Police—who were responsible for enforcing US government policies on reservations—to arrest Sitting Bull at his home. As they carried out the arrest, a confrontation between police and Sitting Bull’s supporters led to a shootout, causing the death of Sitting Bull, his son, and many others from both sides.