The story of the Jingle Dress Dance begins in Whitefish Bay, a reserve village located on the shores of Lake of the Woods in southwestern Ontario. Small and isolated, it is a Native community where traditional values and sensibilities still flourish.
AUTHOR: Ojibway Oral Story Long ago, when human twins were born to Spirit Woman, she relied on the animals to help her take care of them. All the animals loved the first human babies and did everything they could do to help them. The dog watched over them. The bear gave his fur to keep them warm. The wolf hunted for them. The doe provided them with milk. The beaver and the muskrat bathed them. The birds sang lullabies to…
The Blackfoot language is a member of the Algonquian language family and is spoken by the Blackfoot people in North America. It is an indigenous language that is predominantly spoken in Alberta, Canada, and also in Montana, USA. The Blackfoot language has two main dialects: Siksika and Kainai. It is an endangered language with only a few thousand speakers remaining, mainly elderly people.
Out of the plains of Wyoming rises Devil’s Tower. It is really a rock, visible for a hundred miles around, an immense cone of basalt which seems to touch the clouds. Devil’s Tower sticks out of the flat prairie as if someone had pushed it up from underground.
The Creator gathered all of creation and said, “I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality.”
Lyrics and English translation of Anishnawbe Four Directions Song. The video lyrics are in the native language.