Jingle dress book

Continued from Page 12B that Indigenous people began using in the early days of trading.

The book centers on a young Indigenous girl who gets butterflies in her stomach when she thinks about performing the dance in front of her whole community. But when the drum group starts in, her family calms her nerves and reminds her of all the reasons why she dances.

Havrelock said she began thinking about jingle dress dances during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“I was, obviously, at home a lot, and at the time I was on the computer for long hours working on a project” she told ICT. “Whenever I took breaks, I turned to the internet to watch the jingle dress dancers who were dancing for healing from the COVID-19 virus. The dancing was beautiful and genuine. Watching the dancers, especially the children, sparked a few things in me.”

She remembered that as a child she had wanted to learn to dance at a powwow but was afraid to ask, and she realized she had been deeply moved by the pandemic.

“I knew I was witnessing a significant historic event that I felt was important,” she said. “I felt pulled toward this dance because of the spirituality of the dance as prayer, and I wanted to learn more.”

The idea for the book came later.

“At first, I wasn’t thinking about writing a book,” she said. “I just wanted to learn about the dance’s history and I wanted to learn more about dancing as prayer. So, I started asking questions, started doing some research, and I started praying for understanding. Eventually, when an editor asked me what subject I’d like to work on in the way of a picture book, I naturally said, ‘jingle dress dancing.’”

Havrelock grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where she said she had a ghost in her house and a feisty, feminist grandmother.

As a child she wished for a buffalo for a pet, so her debut picture book, “Buffalo Wild!” from Annick Press in 2021 was about that wish.