Bunibonibee Cree Nation designer's Every Child Matters-inspired jingle dress featured at human rights museum

When Amanda Grieves was growing up, she had a painting in her home of a young Indigenous girl wearing a moose-hide dress. 

She'd always dreamed of wearing it.

"I would point out to the picture and ask my mom if she can make me a dress like that — that I wanted to wear a dress like that," she said.

Grieves, from Bunibonibee Cree Nation in northeastern Manitoba, would grow up to design her own ribbon skirts and jingle dresses, one of which is currently the focus of a new installation at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

"I'm in awe," said Grieves. "I just can't believe it."

Her jingle dress, called Awasisuk, has been on display since February but was officially unveiled to the public at a Thursday launch event at the museum. 

The bright orange jingle dress, which features images of children in front of a teepee, was inspired by the "Every Child Matters" movement and the discoveries of what are believed to be unmarked graves at residential school sites across the country, Grieves says in her curator's statement on the museum's website.

The message of the dress is about "intergenerational healing and the process of moving forward to create not only a better future for ourselves but for our children as well," the statement says.

Her own children helped her make the dress, the mother of six said in an interview with CBC Manitoba's Information Radio on Friday. 

"It's healing, right? For my children and myself," said Grieves.

"It has details …of the symbol of home, love, hope."

Rorie McLeod, a spokesperson for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the dress was chosen through the museum's open call for submissions for its community corridor — a space in the main level of the building at The Forks that's free of charge and provides a platform for community members to share their work.

The dress tells a compelling story that the museum is honoured to display — and one all Canadians should know about, said McLeod. 

"We are in the midst still of navigating the realities of unmarked graves at residential schools," he said. "This story sewn into the dress speaks to the realities of that."

'We have to continue to carry through'

News about the discoveries at residential schools "triggered … the whole world" and "opened up a lot of wounds," said Grieves.

"We don't really know how to deal with our big emotions," she said. "We tend to turn to the negative coping mechanisms."

But there's hope, said Grieves.

"The culture that they were trying to take away by colonialism, you know, it's coming back."

For Grieves, who was born and raised in Bunibonibee Cree Nation (formerly known as Oxford House), making jingle dresses has been a way to release negative emotions and reconnect with her culture.

She learned to sew by watching her mother and grandmothers as a child, she said.

"A lot of our grandmothers … that's what carried them through, was to keep expressing themselves through their hands. It was part of their lifestyle," she said.

Now she's teaching her own children, as a way to show them the importance of cultural expression.

"When I look at my daughters wearing the dresses that I make for them, I think back to me as a little girl and wanting to have a dress like the one that the picture that we had," said Grieves.

Passing on that tradition is important, she says.

"We have to continue to carry through."

Awasisuk will be on display at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights until Aug. 22.