Name is Aaron.

Hi.

I'm a member of the Navajo Nation and we are part of the Art heals the jingle Dress project.

And we're here in Minnesota for the purpose of dancing and healing.

The heart of our idea is to actually go out and to heal the land and heal the people.

And, 100 years ago, the the jingle dress dance originated with the Ojibwe people during the pandemic in 1918.

And so, we kind of feel like this is a great time for us to do what we're doing.

And there's parallels between our project and and that.

I. I'd always heard the story about the jingle dress, dance, tradition that that there was a little girl who became very ill near death.

Her father had this vision that, ultimately saved her life.

And this little girl became the first, jingle dress dancer.

So my name is Eugene Safari.

I'm with to party photography.

I'm the owner and a photographer.

The project I'm working on right now is, called the Art heals.

The jingle Dress Project.

It actually originated from a dream I had.

I dreamt one night that I was actually in Yellowstone National Park, and I was sitting in a green field, and I was watching, bison, kind of grazing out on the field.

And as I was sitting there just enjoying the scenery, enjoying the moment, I realized that, all of a sudden this jingle just sort of started coming onto the grass.

And then all of a sudden they started, the song started and they were started to dance.

And it was really beautiful.

And I really, took it to heart that this was a sign for something that, was something that I needed to do.

So when we do go out to the lands, we're actually going to places where our ancestors have walked before, and and so it makes us feel good when we go out there because we're trying to also along with the healing, we're also looking at it in the sense of the reclamation of native lands, reclaiming the land, and also we're there to heal the land, and we're there to heal the people that are supporting us, and also just all people in general during this pandemic.

I'm Brenda Child, a professor of American studies and American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota.

I'm read Lake Ojibwe, and I've been working on the history of the Ojibwe jingle dress dance tradition for, quite a number of years now.

I knew that the jingle dress was an Ojibwe tradition, and then it was kind of regional.

For many years it was practiced by Ojibwe people of the Great Lakes of the United States and Canada.

And then very quickly, it moved to our Dakota neighbors.

But it was sort of a regional tradition among Ojibwe and Dakota people until the later decades of the 20th century, when it became kind of a pan-Indian phenomenon.

I went to standing Rock.

That was where I had my calling to become a jingle dress dancer.

And so, ever since then, it's always been tied, with my purpose of of healing the land and healing those who are in need.

I'd always heard the story about the jingle dress dance, tradition, that that there was this little girl who became very ill near death.

Her father had this vision that, ultimately saved her life.

And this little girl became the first, jingle dress dancer.

And I thought that was a very powerful story, but was interesting to me is that when I went looking at the history of the jingle dress.

And I knew about it growing up at Red Lake, my grandmother, born in the early 20th century, was a jingle dress dancer.

All her life, she lived into her 80s.

And so, it was something I always knew about.

In 1918, 19, there was a terrible pandemic that was devastating to American Indians as well as other people in the world, and who would have predicted that a whole new healing tradition would come out of that terrible pandemic, one that's still with us a century later.

Every time you go to a powwow and you see the jingle dress dance performed, you're seeing history.

It's about the pandemic of a century ago.

So American Indians are very good at, remembering the epidemic of a century ago.

What's interesting here we are figuring out now in another pandemic, what the coronavirus is all about.

The influenza in 1918, 19.

It was very interesting, too, because it, was very deadly to young people.

And that's considered a very worrisome thing in public health when young people die.

But there was something about that virus that a lot of young people were susceptible to it.

Now we find with the coronavirus, it's the older people who are susceptible to it.

This pandemic tells me, as a historian, is how poor we are at predicting the future.

A lot of people have said, oh, this is what the United States is going to be like after the pandemic.

This is what Indian country is going to be like after the pandemic.

We don't really know what the future is.

And just being able to to have this project to work on during this time, it's really, healed me and I know it's really empowered the girls to be able to be a part of this project.

So the locations we've selected are areas where we know that people are going to love to see those images that we've taken there with the girls in the jingle dresses, and then also knowing that those lands right now are needing healing.

And so that's one of the biggest reasons we chose the areas we've been to.

And then when we get to get in front of the camera, their strength and their courage and their the women they are, it comes through in the images and I, I at times just cry because it's just so amazing to me how wonderful their lives are going to be when when they become leaders and when they become our future.

By the way, you heard.

It's an incredible to be here because, usually we have four dancers, but today we have more dancers.

And it's been a blast to be able to interact with them and to see the differences and, jingle dresses.

And it's the sacrifices of our ancestors that we will continue on their legacy.

And I think that's the important part of dancing on the land that they once were.

And my dad had the dream of, of this project.

And, it's it's been giving us purpose because we know that this purpose is going to be more than just, the project now in visiting different locations, it's going to have a lasting impact on the public.