To celebrate National Indigenous People’s Day on Friday (June 21) and the end of the school year, School District No.57’s (SD57) board of education invited a student to perform a traditional jingle dress dance at their final June 18 meeting.
Caitlyn McCarville, who performed the dance, is a 15-year-old student from Duchess Park Secondary School.
“She is Saulteaux and Ojibway from her mum’s side and Irish and Scottish on her dads. The dance Caitlyn is going to perform this evening is a Powwow dance known as a Jingle Dress Sance,” said Board Chair Tim Bennett as he introduced McCarville. “Caitlyn started dancing when she was a toddler, but started dancing more seriously between the ages of three and four.”
The origins of the Jingle Dress Dance are from an Ojibway legend of a father whose daughter was very sick with no chance of recovery and he had a vision of the jingle dress dance.
He saw the dress and the instructions for the dance and went about putting the dress together taught her how to do the dance and she was healed.
The dance became adopted by more Indigenous communities because of its connections to prayer and healing.
National Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations begin this Friday at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, continuing into the evening at Canada Games Plaza.
The board of education will resume its meetings during the next school year, as the first one is scheduled for September 24.
Elementary schools will also be closed for the summer as of the end of the school day on June 28, and secondary schools will close for the summer at the end of the school day on July 5.
