Millie Cloud Character Analysis

Millie Cloud is Louis Pipestone’s daughter and a graduate student who returns to the reservation at Thomas’s invitation. Her white mother raised her away from the Turtle Mountain Reservation, but, as a student at the University of Minnesota, she recently completed a study of the economic conditions of the reservation. Because of her work, she eventually becomes integral in the effort to strike down the Termination Bill. She is a member of the delegation that travels to Washington, D.C. to testify before congress, and, in some respects, her economic survey is the backbone of their testimony. Millie finds patterns pleasing and often dresses in them. Her ambivalence toward romance is somewhat reminiscent of Patrice’s, and she says that men are not interested in her. At one point, Millie seems to harbor romantic feelings for Patrice, but near the end of the novel, she decides to go out with Barnes after he asks her out using an equation, which she finds irresistible. At the end of the novel, she is planning to study with Zhaanat and is in the process of securing funding that would allow Zhaanat to be paid for her teaching.