A Council of Dolls

“I don’t tell Mama about my nightmares. She doesn’t like to hear what bothers me. So nightmares get piled up next to my angry thoughts, which don’t get cleared away by penance anymore.”

This observation reveals Lillian’s character as a mother, portraying her as uncaring. It also evokes sympathy for Sissy and develops the conflict between the two characters. Without being able to confide in her mother, Sissy is limited in her ability to process troubling experiences and emotions. This context informs her fractured sense of self in adulthood. The passage also subtly touches on the tension between Christianity and Dakhóta spirituality in its allusion to the Catholic practice of penance. Sissy refers to this practice as “clearing away” her “angry thoughts,” yet the novel suggests that merely attempting to erase trauma is not a viable path toward healing.

“‘Your mom’s off rabble-rousing, […] I shouldn’t have said that.’ Dad pushes my hair behind my ears. ‘Your mama is great at fighting for us, fighting for our community. Sometimes people take their anger and use it in a good way.’”

Bitter about the way her ancestors have been treated and about her own experiences with racism, Lillian is passionate about advocating for Dakhóta people and other Indigenous Americans. This passion reveals her motivation as a character, including how cultural conflict shapes her worldview and parenting style. Cornelius’s comment adds depth to Lillian’s character by emphasizing one of her positive qualities. Ironically, the anger that fuels her advocacy is the same anger that triggers her terrifying rages. Cornelius’s attitude toward Lillian reflects the book’s overall tone, which urges sympathy for those touched by intergenerational trauma rather than condemnation.

“I should have the guidance and safety they never had, taken away to Indian boarding schools when they were so young. There’s a word he uses that I don’t understand because I miss too much of what he says around it: ‘indoctrination.’ He wants Mama to keep me away from those kinds of doctors or teachers who will do worse than take my land: they’ll steal my spirit.”

Sissy’s father wants Lillian to stay home rather than work because he wants Sissy’s childhood to be different from his and Lillian’s. He worries that if Sissy doesn’t spend enough time with members of her Dakhóta family and community, she’ll be subjected to the same things her parents faced at boarding school—namely, the Cultural Erasure and Forced Assimilation of Indigenous Americans. This quote reveals why indoctrination is so harmful, equating the manipulation of people’s beliefs to the theft of their spirit.

“‘Oh, Jack would’ve had a lot to say about that travesty,’ Grandma says. ‘If he’d been here, he’d have written reams of protest letters.’ ‘If he’d been here, he’d have gotten drunk and drowned.’ Ethel jostles my arm and I spill my glass of water to cover Mama’s words. No one scolds. I think they’re relieved by the interruption. Mama grabs a dish towel to sop up the wet table. I thank Ethel in my head for rescuing the grown-ups from their bad moods and sad memories.”

Cora and Lillian’s vastly different attitudes toward Jack illustrate how life’s hardships changed him over time. Cora knew Jack when he was young and hopeful and can still see him that way. Lillian has only known her father as an embittered man with an alcohol addiction. Amid the tension this allusion to Jack causes, Ethel’s distraction reveals part of the symbolic role dolls play in the novel, helping the protagonists cope with the painful parts of life.

“I feel Grandma’s hand on my cheek again, her other hand smooths my forehead. ‘Whatever strength I have left is for you. Keep noticing everything. Keep that beautiful heart open. Someday it will save you.’”

Unlike Sissy’s mother, her grandmother is a consistent source of love and support when they are together. Cora’s words to Sissy characterize both women as kind and optimistic. They also give Sissy courage and help her see how her ancestors can offer guidance and share their wisdom and strength, contributing to the book’s thematic exploration of Ancestral Connections and Indigenous Traditions as Sources of Healing and Resilience.

“With him it’s best to say as little as possible because you never know what word will come at him like a punch and make him angry.”

Lillian’s portrayal of her father is ironic. She hates and fears him because of his temper, which makes him abuse his wife and children. Despite Lillian’s feelings about this, she becomes very similar as an adult and treats her daughter the same way. The unpredictability of Jack’s anger, like Lillian’s later on, suggests it has less to do with what’s happening in the moment and more to do with deep emotional wounds. Indeed, the simile likening the triggers of Jack’s rage to “punches” frames him as a survivor of abuse rather than/in addition to a perpetrator of it, highlighting the role trauma has played in shaping his behavior.

“Sometimes when you lose every fight, you end up breaking.”

During his brief period of sobriety, Jack exhibits rare insight into his own flaws and the experiences that fomented them. His words here foreshadow Cora’s story in Part 3, which reveals how different he was in his youth and how losing his fight against forced assimilation eventually broke his spirit. Because of this, Jack’s character arc and his influence on Lillian and Sissy’s lives exemplify the enduring impact of historical injustices on Indigenous Americans.

“I don’t mean to make us cry, just the opposite. The point is that even in difficult times, see how the light is always working to come in. Don’t forget to notice.”

The author develops and reveals Cora’s character, in part, through the role she plays as a mother and grandmother. Despite all the hardships she’s faced, Cora remains an optimist, as her metaphorical reference to light shows. This quote follows the story about Jack carving her a buffalo figurine to comfort her when she was sad. Cora uses such stories from her childhood to teach Lillian—and later Sissy—important lessons, contributing to the book’s motif of the power of language and stories as well as its theme of resilience.

“What finally gives me the energy to push myself forward, into the new school year, is the steady voice of the Missouri River, which runs beneath this hill. Its powerful flow continues as it did before this place was built, before our teachers were born, before English words ever traveled across its waves. This water is my relative, and it’s so much stronger than anyone inside these buildings.”

All three of the book’s protagonists portray a connection to nature and a belief in the living spirits of the natural world as important aspects of Dakhóta identity. This is reinforced by a writing style that leans into personification and nature symbolism. In this quote, the river is not a metaphor for her relative; rather, the water has a spirit that is connected to Lillian in the same way as her human relatives. This worldview creates a symbiosis that Lillian sees as a great source of strength—a view that the tone of the book reinforces.

“Iná presses the doll on me, and I take her into my arms. I let out a shaky breath and learn an awful lesson I still don’t understand. How when a dream comes true you have to feel deserving or else it brings only guilt and shame.”

Lillian’s experience of guilt and shame when she receives her doll relates to the conflict between assimilating or rebelling—a life-long tension captured by her paradoxical remark that she learned a lesson without coming to understand it. The doll is a reward for reading to the audience so well at the Christmas party, a performance Lillian now feels ashamed of. She was treated like a trick pony to make white people feel proud of how they’d educated her. This quote builds Lillian’s character and reveals the lack of self-love that Ethel later observes.

“Mae is evidence of my magic—proof that what I think, and even hope, can become real. I don’t want to give that medicine back, even for a dear lonesome girl.”

Lillian’s words about Mae help explicate the role of dolls in the novel. As a craft element, dolls symbolically convey ideas and develop themes. Within the world of the novel, dolls help the protagonists meet their emotional needs. One of Lillian’s emotional needs is to have a strong sense of self and autonomy in a society that wants to control her and change her, as exemplified by the character of Sister Frances. Mae helps Lillian develop that sense, which empowers her. The fact that Lillian gives her doll to Ada anyway, after saying this, shows how generous and thoughtful she is as a child.

“But maybe the Ghost Dance works apart from Time, and the dance will take generations to complete? By then maybe some wašíčus will have joined our family, and then they, too, will take up the dance? What is wakháŋ is powerful beyond comprehension. Maybe we should dance and dream and pray for the good of everything in the world because we’re meant to restore it together.”

Cora’s father tells her about the Ghost Dance, which adherents of the prophet Wovoka (also known as Jack Wilson) believed would bring them new prosperity and rid their lands of white invaders. His hopeful message offers insight into Dakhóta beliefs and values. For example, his conception of time differs from a strict linear view, which can over-simplify cause-and-effect relationships and other natural phenomena (indeed, the dance itself aimed in part to alter the direction of time, returning participants to a precolonial era; the novel, with its nonlinear structure, functions similarly, transporting readers further and further into the past in search of healing). The allusion to what is beyond comprehension foreshadows Jesse’s contemplation of the sacred mystery in Part 4, and his vision of restoring the world foreshadows Jack’s vision of his and Cora’s future.

“Winona is horrified by this talk. She whispers to me at night that wašíčus are more interested in remaking us to fit their image than in offering us successful lives; she insists they’re also attempting to control our leaders by persuading them to hand over their children. How can there be an effective rebellion if one’s children are held by the enemy?”

Winona’s fears set the tone for Power’s depiction of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which was the flagship of the boarding school era in the US. Power uses the setting of the Carlisle school to shine a light on the destructive nature of this “educational” system. Winona’s use of the term wašíčus is part of a pattern in which the earliest chronological sections contain the most Dakhóta-Lakhóta words. This pattern emphasizes the effects of cultural erasure and equates the loss of one’s native language with the loss of identity.

“Instead, I started with my small, lonesome self and built protection around me, one encompassing circle at a time, like providing wider arms to hold me the farther away the world became.”

A puzzle that Cora’s father carves for her consists of circles within circles, which as a whole represent Cora’s place within her family, her Dakhóta community, her nation, and the world and all of its beings. The nesting circles symbolize the belief that they all live in a harmonious balance. Cora, the center circle, sees each layer of outer circles as sources of protection and connectedness, offering a concrete metaphor of what community means in Dakhóta culture; it is as personal as the embrace of a loved one.

“There is no true healing without remembering, she tells me in her silent way, and she guides my finger inside a bullet hole that has ripped through her heart. I know I should be horrified, but I’m honored by this connection, this intimacy across death and Time.”

Cora’s worldview includes a belief in spirits and in connections between the living and spirits, especially the spirits of one’s ancestors. Cora’s interaction with the ancestor spirit in this quote helps explicate the spirit’s symbolic significance. Broadly, she symbolizes the connection between ancestors and descendants, which proves to be a powerful source of healing and resilience.

“Four days and four nights without food or water, standing in a pit I scratched out of the earth, praying, and offering the pipe, asking for guidance or whatever Wakháŋ Tháŋka and the spirits wanted to show me.”

Jack’s performance of the haŋbdéčheya ceremony demonstrates his faith in the sacred and the spirit world, as well as his willingness to make sacrifices for his beliefs. These sacrifices—food, water, comfort, safety—characterize him as passionate and dedicated to preserving his people’s way of life. He experiences a vision during the ceremony that informs his motivation: to help restore the world his people once knew.

“I will do what I can from this distance, write letters that I think of as sewing projects, where I use the careful needlework of my pen to stitch the boy into a suit that will keep him in one solid piece.”

Power’s writing style includes figurative language that reflects how her protagonists see the world and helps define Dakhóta identity. As Cora experiences new settings, like Carlisle, and learns new things, like sewing, her worldview changes, and so does the language with which she expresses it. This metaphor, depicting letters as needlework that will keep Jack’s spirit stitched together (another reference to language’s power to shape reality), reveals another change in Cora’s character: Her motivation is now to support Jack and keep him from breaking.

“An inner voice whispers, ‘You killed her.’”

This line reveals that even in her fifties, Jesse is still traumatized by the death of her mother when she was a child and burdened by unresolved questions regarding how it happened. This revelation retroactively develops the conflict between Sissy/Jesse and Lillian and marks Lillian’s death as a major turning point in Sissy/Jesse’s character arc.

“She tips her head, which feels like an affirmation, opens her mouth to show me her tongue is gone. She cannot speak as she once did. Someone did more than kill her, he destroyed her. Yet here I am, she conveys to me with her mind. We only think we’re destroyed.”

Prior to this point in the narrative, the wounded ancestor spirit has only appeared to Cora. She now appears to Jesse for the first time, an indication that a new chapter of Jesse’s life is beginning to unfold. She’s learning to open herself up to things unseen—to sense the connections between her and her ancestors, whose presence can comfort and nourish her. In this quote, the ancestor spirit is a parallel to Jesse, helping her realize that she, too, is resilient.

“I keep teetering between my spirit self and my skeptical self. If I’m honest, I know my heart believes my khúŋši and her acceptance of sacred mystery, of the realm that exists not only within our hearts, but because of them. My chattering mind has always been the trouble. It’s a being that wretchedly interrogates anything wondrous that could make me happy but requires surrender. My chattering mind can’t help herself, so I treat her with compassion. She’s witnessed what happens when I raise my hands and accept whatever is coming.”

The duality Jesse describes here echoes the dichotomy seen throughout the novel as a result of two conflicting cultures. The two parts of Jesse, her spirit self and her skeptical self (also figured as a mind versus body binary), represent those two cultures. One embodies the indoctrination and skepticism that seek to erase Indigenous customs and values. The other strives to live in harmonious balance with the world and emphasizes emotional health and wholeness. Treating her “chattering mind with compassion” is Jesse’s way of understanding the complexity of this conflict and giving herself grace.

“The act of writing was my safe place for several years, the one realm where I could open myself completely to inspiration in an unconscious, trusting way that felt a bit like magic. I hurled myself at the work like a fearless dancer throwing her body across a stage. I wrote and wrote—novels, stories, essays. My first book won a major award and I met several of my literary heroes. But when you harbor an inner script that treats you like the enemy, it doesn’t allow you to soar for very long.”

Jesse’s character in Part 4 highlights the autobiographical aspects of the novel. Jesse is in some ways Mona Susan Power; novelist, award winner, Yanktonai Dakhóta citizen, and daughter of a traumatized woman who passed her trauma down. The inner script Jesse refers to, in which she’s the enemy, is a result of her contentious relationship with her mother, who made emotional needs seem like a thing to be ashamed of, as well as of internalized racism. She uses the metaphor of not being able to soar for long as a reminder that trauma must eventually be confronted. The simile of dancing, meanwhile, connects her work as a writer to traditions like the Ghost Dance, implying that both can serve as a means of connecting with and even reanimating the past.

“She can’t stop Sister Frances from poisoning Blanche with a stomachful of melted lye soap. All she can do is distract Lily’s mind so it floats to safety, and remain with her when she slams back into her body.”

This line, from Mae’s perspective, develops the function and symbolism of dolls. Lillian blames her doll, Mae, for not saving Blanche’s life. She loses faith in Mae, which makes her lose faith in her own magic and destroys her sense of self. Her subsequent lack of self-love prevents her from giving healthy love to her husband and daughter. For all the dolls offer to the protagonists, literally and symbolically, they can only do so much in the face of oppressive hardship. This message contributes to the book’s pragmatic vision of the world.

“Creativity that comes from our most courageous, authentic heart opens us to the Flow, an unseen river of images, insights, and visions where we connect across time with all that has ever lived.”

The collected wisdom of the council of dolls is presented in lyrical language that focuses on connectedness and mysticism. The style of this quote builds on the use of figurative language and symbolism throughout the book. River symbolism, in particular, is a recurring feature of the narrative, revealing Dakhóta beliefs and attitudes regarding the natural world.