Saskatchewan-based Morgan Opikokew didn’t know that strapping her four-month-old daughter Margot into a harness to help her participate in her first powwow dance would make such a big splash online. But now that it has, she hopes it will encourage other parents to pass down their Cree heritage early on. 

The sweet video shows little Margot bouncing along in a jingle dress dance, a sacred healing tradition practiced by Cree, Ojibwe, and other Indigenous nations across North America. This tradition originated with the Ojibwe people in the early 20th century, around the time of the 1918 flu pandemic. 

History of the Jingle Dress Dance

As the legend goes, the granddaughter of an Ojibwe medicine man fell sick. While sleeping, the grandfather kept dreaming of four women wearing Jingle Dresses and dancing. In the dreams, these women taught the man how to make the dress, what songs to play, and how to perform the dance, all of which would heal his granddaughter. When the grandfather........

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