A jingle dress to join ‘one family and all its relations’

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This article was published 24/03/2023 (1295 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A little over 10 years ago, Amanda Grieves faced a struggle to which each of us can relate: she didn’t know what to wear to the big ceremony.

So she sat down at her kitchen table to make an outfit, cutting strips of fabric and sewing them together by hand. With a few hours to spare, Grieves had completed a jingle skirt.

“It wasn’t as pretty as the other women’s skirts,” she recalls.

But an elder at the ceremony disagreed. “She told me it was beautiful in its own way,” Grieves says. “And she told me that in the future, I would be known for the skirts I make. I never knew her name. She just told me to call her kookum.”

Kookum was right: a jingle dress Grieves made is now on display at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The dress, called Awasisuk, meaning ‘children,’ is bright orange, adorned with jingling cones and featuring designs depicting a teepee, thunderbird, and children holding hands.

“My children were my main inspiration to make this,” says Grieves, a mother of six who was raised in Bunibonibee Cree Nation, a community commonly known as Oxford House.

Kids were on her mind as she worked away on the dress at her kitchen table in Thompson. “When the unmarked graves (were uncovered), it opened a lot of wounds that a lot of people suppressed for many years,” says Grieves, referring to the hundreds of graves found on the sites of former residential schools across the country.

“This dress represents all children, not just Indigenous ones,” she says. The teepee represents home and love; the purple segment near the abdomen represents a kookum scarf, rendered in the favourite colour of her late mother, Roberta Grieves. “Children see nothing but love, but through colonialism, (the government) tried to take that love away.”

When her father, Alan Dennis Grieves, was growing up, he was forced to go to residential school in Oxford House and Portage. In his youth, he was barred from practising his traditional culture. Ceremonies and practices, including jingle dancing, were considered illegal.

“It was very hard for those generations,” says Amanda Grieves. “They didn’t know where to start.

“Luckily for me, I had my parents and both my grandparents as a part of my life, and they taught us all we know,” she says.

Grieves may not have made her first dress until she was an adult, but growing up, she watched elders and relatives make their own. At the ceremonies she attended, she caught glimpses of the stories and ideas clothing could convey.

Awasisuk’s story is one of resilience and healing, Grieves says. It’s also a way of continuing to keep the memories of her ancestors alive.

Unlike that first dress, which Grieves made alone, she had some help on Awasisuk: her sisters kept her company as she worked, her daughters lent a hand or two, and her grandson, Kisik, helped put the jingling cones together.

It’s a garment that ties together the fabric of one family and all its relations.

“A dress like this brings out the beauty that is deep inside,” says Grieves. “It brings out the healing. I don’t want to say that it’s art, because for myself and for other dressmakers I’m sure, it’s a way of life.”

Awasisuk will be on display in the CMHR’s community corridor until August. Today, March 24 from 5:30-7 p.m., Grieves, her father, and community organizer Michael Redhead Champagne will discuss the garment in an event at the museum entitled Behind the Dress: A Call to Keep Fighting for Our Kids.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com