Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Jingle-Dress Dancing as Pandemic Medicine

Thanks to nursingclio_feed, a reflective, captioned video tracing the history of Ojibwe jingle-dress dancing as a religious response to the 1919 flu pandemic. Dr Brenda Child, an Ojibwe historian, explains how the jingle-dress and dancing has traveled through her family, and how it can support hope that we will turn the corner.

Content notes: genocide, suicide, school shooting, residential schools.

( Video: Jingle Dress Dancers in the Modern World: Ojibwe People and Pandemics )

Jingle Dress Medicine via Virtual Powwow

Whitney Spears’ words from the video: ( 250 words )

High Country News is a non-profit journalism service covering the Western US, building a regional perspective while addressing environmental and indigenous issues, resource "management" and destruction.

I live in the ancestral home of the Ho-Chunk People, where the University of Wisconsin-Madison now sits on the former sites of sacred burial mounds.

High Country News explains how "land grant" institutions like UW-Madison — often held up as examples of democratic learnings — were funded by stealing indigenous people’s lives and land.

Land-grab universities

( taste these 420 words of excerpt and you’ll want to read the whole thing. )