DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Compare what you learned in school about the 1862 Dakota War to the way this story unfolds. What, if anything, has changed in your understanding of this event?
2. How might the author’s life have been different if she had had a strong sense of her Dakota heritage as a child?
3. Whose story is the author telling? For whom is she writing the story?
4. What impact is achieved by the Dakota Indian history being told through personal family stories? How is the effect different from reading about the same events in a history book?
5. Would Lucille’s life likely have been
better or more difficult without her boarding school experiences? What do
you think the boarding schools represented to the Dakota Indian families?
6. Talk about what the author means when she talks about riding in
her spirit car. Have you ever had a similar
experience in connecting with the past?
7. Give examples of when the author uses
humor in the book. What role does humor play?
8. What is the biggest loss the author is writing about? Discuss the various losses documented in the book.
9. The last sentence of the book is the author’s response to her mother, Lucille: “Yes, I think things are changing for the better.” What do the author and Lucille mean by this statement?
10. In thinking about your own family, do you know how and wh y they came to America (if non-Native)? Do you know of any significant history your family members lived through, such as wars or depressions or world-changing inventions like the telephone?
11. What is the value of understanding and having connection
to one’s family over several generations? How might
learning about something significant and troubling in your family’s history change you?
12. The book jacket describes the book as a counterpoint of memoir and carefully researched fiction. What is your understanding of the term “carefully researched fiction ”, and do you think this technique adds or detracts from the cohesiveness of the book? Do the stories we tell about our own lives incorporate some degree of fiction?
From http://www.thefriends.org/assets/documents/spirit-car.pdf
Q. What are you currently writing?
The next book will be a progression of some of the themes in
Spirit Car, although it won’t be a family
memoir. I found myself wondering, when a
person/community has done the work of reclaiming
cultural identity, what’s next? How do you restore
what was lost, how do you heal the traumas of the
past, how do you assume responsibility for the
knowledge that was given? I believe the answer to
those questions is closely tied to our relationship to
the land, to the earth.
Q. What do you hope your readers take away from reading this book?
People have told me that reading a family story has
helped them understand Native history because they
can relate to events on a personal level rather than at
a state or national level, as history is often written. I
hope they see how the past lives on in the present,
how an event like the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota
is very much a part of our contemporary lives. I also
hope they see the beauty and wonder of their own
family stories and how much we’re shaped by the
generations who came before us 
