Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of racism, child sexual abuse, religious discrimination, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, substance use, death, illness, and addiction.



Much of A Council of Dolls revolves around a conflict between Indigenous cultures and what the text refers to as white culture. For generations, the US government forced Indigenous Americans to adopt the language, religion, and customs of what had—through conquest and colonization—become the dominant culture. This process is called forced assimilation. It works, in part, by stripping a group of its methods for preserving its own cultural institutions, as well as pushing them to adopt the cultural institutions of those in power. This inability to preserve their culture leads to its erasure, depriving future generations of many aspects of their heritage. Through the protagonists’ main conflicts, both internal and external, A Council of Dolls illuminates the ways in which the US government and white society oppressed Indigenous Americans through forced assimilation and cultural erasure and depicts the lasting, harmful impact of these tactics on individual identities.

The tactics of forced assimilation and cultural erasure depicted in the text include both formal and informal mechanisms and are reflected in both external and internal conflicts.