Origins of the Jingle Dress Dance

Sometime in the early 1900s the “Jingle Dress Dance began with the northern tribe Ojibwa” and later became well known in “Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario” (Sacred Springs Powwow). According to the story, the first Jingle dress was “seen in a dream” when a “medicine man’s granddaughter grew sick”, during the dream “his spirit guides ... told him to make a jingle dress for her” to dance in which “would heal her” (Sacred Springs Powwow). He made the jingle dress, “also known as a prayer dress”, and his granddaughter danced in it with the help of her tribe who “carried her” until she was “able to dance alone” (Sacred Springs Powwow). After some time, it is said that her jingle dress dance helped to cure her sickness, which may have been the flu.  

Ban and revival

It wasn’t long before the Jingle Dress Dance was “federally banned” along with all “ritual dancing in the 1920s on reservations” (Sacred Springs Powwow). Today, however, the dance which “involves low, soft-footed steps, as could be performed by those who were sick” is “performed competitively and in ceremonies” in modern ways by “competitive dancers [who] push the boundaries” of tradition (Sacred Springs Powwow).  

Learn more 

 For more information on the Jingle dress story, please consider the following resources:

• Sasakwe: Origins of the Healing Jingle Dress APTN News (YouTube). 26 minutes and 40 seconds video.
• Ojibwe Jingle Dresses from Past to Present. Science Museum of Minnesota (2021). YouTube, 5 minutes and 18 seconds video.