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.