St'uxwtews Embrace Jingle Dancing in the Community

In response to requests from the community, St’uxtew’s youth worker Karen Walker partnered with Shaunna Pierro to offer a jingle dress dance class for girls. The class had a total of 13 students. The enrollment included indigenous and non-indigenous youth from the surrounding communities.

 After being approached by community members to teach jingle dress dancing, St’uxtewse Youth worker Karen Walker teamed up with Shaunna Pierro to offer a girls-only class in the art of jingle dress dancing. The class had a total of 13 participants, including girls from both indigenous and surrounding communities. “No, it's for anybody that wants to learn including non-native 'cause they like to know our culture so I just opened it up to everybody. She said, “I know 'cause there are a lot of non-natives that want to learn our culture and stuff and so I bring them in to do stuff like this would be, I think it would be good thing.”

Jingle dress is first nations and native American women's pow wow regalia and dance. The regalia worn for the dance is a jingle dress, that includes ornamentation with multiple rows of metal, such as cones, which create a jingling sound as the dancer moves. The Origins of the jingle dress can be attributed to three different Ojibwa communities however it has since spread through the different nations. While the jingle dress and dancing are not traditional apart of Secwepemec peoples culture, the teaching was adopted by some community members as a method for parents to have a fun activity to do with their children.” Norman Retasket, a Bonaparte Elder an attended event and saw the girls perform. said, “I think it's great because we belong to a global society now we're not just I mean this is where we will put that doesn't mean we don't come from someplace else right and I've experienced that in north too the people up there in the north, the elders were telling them that they don’t pow wow up there they use the hand drum which is the Chilcotin band they bought 14 power drums off me because the kids said we want to pow wow and we belong to the global society now because of the media there close to the world and they don't want to isolate themselves and all they say this is what we do in Bonaparte  and we’re not going to change. You have to change the world or you get left behind.”

The Mille Lacs, Red Lake Band of Chippewa and the Whitefish Bay Ojibwe has a few versions of how the dress came to be, In the Mille Lacs and Whitefish Bay versions of the story, the dress and the dance appeared in a recurring vivid dream that a Midewinini (or in English translation, a medicine man) had about 1900. In the dream there are four women, each wearing a jingle dress and dancing. Each dream also gave instructions on how to make the dresses, what types of songs went with them and how the dance was to be performed. The jingle dress has become a symbol of healing in the Native American community. Some women adopted the jingle dress as a healing dress, and people often give jingle dress dancers tobacco to have them pray for themselves or people they care for that are not well.

“So many other nations adapted into this specific and single it's all of the other dancers there's when men's traditional woman traditional there's womens fancy man's fancy Mens chick in their southern dancers southern fancy there's there's a lot and it's not just Jingle but Jingle is that's my passion that's why I brought it back but I know the I'm not saying that they never count around here but it's not as big as I wanted to be!" said the girl's dance instructor, Shaunna Pierro.

The dancers made their debut performance at  the Honour Our Elder’s Ceremony on May 27th, and their second performance on June 21 at Hat Creek Ranch.

Shalan Jones is a parent of the danced and enjoyed her daughter’s performance.  “Yes it was the first time she was into Jingle dancing and she really really enjoyed it and it made me happy watching her doing it and enjoy it what was it like watching her today it made me really happy she was shy at first but she got into it and I had to go up and do it with her but she she got in there so.”

Having made the decision to open the classes to everyone to share knowledge and foster community, and through their actions both indigenous and non-indigenous communities took a step towards healthy reconciliation.”

"I mean they need to know whatever culture whether you're white, black it doesn't matter you need to know those cultures we need to know where you came from you need to have that strength so it was actually caring and Sean and I touched them he said she's in general she should know what is you know and it was a great experience for her,”  said Janet Applebee, a non-indigenous, Jingle Dancer Grandparent.

Karen and a few of the parents got together to create and sew the jingle dresses themselves. “the last dress was finished this morning, So it's actually quite nice and we have a couple of our moms and yeah so we've done it's last couple weeks with hard work but we did it! The last dress was done this morning so yeah it was actually pretty good.”

The Dancing classes will continue to be taught in the community and it will be open to other adults that are wanting to learn and connect with indigenous culture as well.