100 years ago, an Ojibwe elder dreamed of four women wearing a beautiful new style of dress. They taught him the special songs they danced to and how to make the garments. He woke up and told his wife everything he had heard and seen. Together, they made four dresses, in yellow, green, blue and red using curled snuff can lids as the noise-making decorations across the torso and fringe. His wife was the first jingle dress dancer.
Their granddaughter fell gravely ill with influenza. Her grandmother asked her to wear one of the special dresses they’d made to a pow-wow celebration. The first time around the circle, the grandparents carried her. The second, the girl walked with support. The third loop their granddaughter danced, suddenly and miraculously well. Their granddaughter lived a long full life.
American Indian ceremonial dancing was banned during the early 1900s in the US and Canada in an attempt to stamp out traditional Native religious beliefs and practices. But women continued to perform the jingle dress dance. In fact, it expanded when Dakota women adopted this Ojibwe custom as well. Today, the best dancers show their stuff at pow-wows across the United States and Canada. One of the most athletic dances for women, the jingle dress dancers twist and turn to make a joyful noise with their movements.
Jingle dresses are a symbol of American Indian cultural resistance, spirituality and female empowerment.
What kind of dancing inspires you?
Gracias for reading Fake Flamenco! ¡Olé! –Rebecca
See what the photographers are up to today for Six Word Saturday!
I’ve never heard of the jingle dresses. I love dance of all cultures. Dance frees my spirit 🙂
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Hope you get the chance to go to a pow-wow in the spring to see the jingle dancers. I looked it up and UCLA has a pow-wow open to the public in May. Here’s a calendar of events nationwide: https://calendar.powwows.com/
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Thanks for the link, Rebecca. I was totally unaware of such events.
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Fanastic text and images, as always. Janice
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Thanks so much! The jingle dress tradition does include your favorite color: red.
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This is my first time hearing of this type of dance. However, I must admit I have seen this type of dresses quite a lot. The history is very interesting, and makes me want to get one for myself 🙂
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Hi Shana, although you would look great in one I think they are reserved for ceremonial use. Thanks for your comments!
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Absolutely 🙂 In my country, we always have a lot of cultural events that require us to wear traditional clothing that can be from our country or a different one to celebrate diversity. I now have another option to add 🙂
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Hi Shana, well since I am a European American, and do not belong to an indigenous tribe, I would not wear the traditional sacred jingle dress of the Ojibwe tribe. Due to the spiritual, medicinal and religious meaning of the dress and the dance, it would not be appropriate to appropriate. I’d want to respect the sacred meaning of the dance and honor the culture of Native people. I imagine you might feel the same way. Hope you can see a pow wow some day!
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Jingles made from can lids!!!
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Ingenious reuse of the metal and it makes a beautiful sound.
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I love jingle dance dresses and included them in my book, Amanda in Alberta: The Writing on the Stone. Amanda and her friend watch a First Nations jingle dance performance at the Calgary Stampede. The jingle dance is very popular with the Plains Indians. Thanks for the history of how the dresses came to be. I find the First Nations Culture fascinating.
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Sounds like a great Amanda adventure. The jingle dresses are worn by First Nations women across the living Plains culture of North America, as you said. So wonderful you reflected that in your book!
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Fabulous story Rebecca!
I love tap dancing! I love the sound the tap shoes make as the dancers dance!
I used to tap dance as a kid! Xxx
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Thanks for your comment Carol Anne. I love the sound of tap dancing too. Flamenco footwork is a lot like tap dancing, maybe because both are linked to African rhythms.
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I meant to tell you Rebecca, I love the name you gave your blog, it’s really cool
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Thank you very much! You’re the sweetest blogger ever! Really appreciate it.
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Oh thank you 🙂 you’re pretty sweet yourself 😉
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Banned as early as the 1870’s in Canada. The Govt. of Can. gave up around 1950, although the Indian Act flag still flies high.
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Thank you for the corrections. I looked up the Indian Act; ugly chapters of Canadian history, as sad a genocide as in US history.
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I have only went to one pow wow but I enjoyed dancing. My ojibwe heritage was hidden by my Christian mother, so I am only finding out about it as an adult. Thank you for writing about our culture.
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Happy to hear you’re connecting with your heritage and have had the chance to attend a pow wow. I got to dance during an all nations song at a pow wow once. The drumming and singing are powerful and moving. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks for taking the time to comment and share your story. -Rebecca
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I’m finding this a bit late, but I’d love to see those dances. My mother had a gold sparkling mini dress covered all over with bells just like the ones in your photos. She passed it on to me and I wore it to parties and danced in it in my twenties, just as she would have done. It was marvellous!
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Hope you can visit Minnesota or Wisconsin for an Autumn pow-wow some year! The dances are beautiful to see and hear (the bells). I can see why someone made a fashion of it in the UK in the 60s for a dance frock. I bet it was fun to wear. Cultural appropriation was not forefront on our minds in those decades, I wanted a jingle dress when I saw one as a child.
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My Mum made me and my best friend [Indian maiden] outfits. We wore them playing in my friends huge overgrown garden. We killed cowboys and stole their horses in all our games.
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I figure you didn’t realize that the [sq…] word is like the n-word for the indigenous communities, a racial slur.
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No, I didn’t. And am mortified. Especially as several of the most loved people in my life are black, and I’ve always fought racism. Just shows we all have more to learn.
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I think of you as a kindred spirit, so I thought it was completely unintentional. Figured you’d want to know… Thanks for your heartfelt response.
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Still feeling awful about it.
The point I was clumsily making is that the costumes gave us two little girls freedom to role-play something far more active and exploratory than the classic tea parties with all our dolls. We also were quite convinced that the cowboys were bad guys, perhaps because we so deeply became our conception of native american girls. My baby brother played an innocent native baby stolen by cowboys on many occasions.
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Sound like in your hearts you were rebels and allies.
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yup!
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