The University of New Hampshire's Native America Cultural Association demonstrates and teaches participants the power of sacred "dreamcatchers" through arts and crafts.
By Benjamin Strawbridge
Contributing Writer
October 19, 2017
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The Native American Cultural Association (NACA) opened the eyes of students to an artistic side of Native American culture as it hosted an Arts and Crafts session on Wednesday, Oct. 18.
From 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., the organization, a part of UNH’s Diversity Support Coalition (DSC), instructed participants in Memorial Union Building (MUB) Room 145 on how to construct their very own dreamcatchers, illustrating both their historical and cultural significance. According to NACA’s corresponding introductory PowerPoint presentation, dreamcatchers were said to have been first invented by the North American Ojibwa Chippewa tribe. This tribe was once the largest Algonquin-speaking tribe located north of the Mexican border and is currently stretching from as far north as Ontario, Canada to as far south as present-day Montana.
According to legend and the corresponding PowerPoint, the tribe used these devices, made out of webs of string, a thin wooden hoop and a collection of various beads and feathers, to capture "dreams” and "spirits” from the night air. They filter the "bad spirits” through each "carefully” laced web and purge them from the webs with the "light from the morning sun,” while the "good spirit dreams” would be sent to the center bead of the dreamcatcher and be sent down the "sacred” feather that adorns the bottom of the device.
Speaking about the significance of the dreamcatcher session to spreading awareness about Native American culture on campus, Senior sociology major and NACA Chair Sydnee Carney said "we just wanted to inform people about dreamcatchers and how they were made, and we wanted to give people their own chance to make their own dreamcatcher, and just to inform people about our club as well.”
Carney also spoke about how her cultural background was a major driver in joining NACA in the first place: "I am Native American myself, so that just prompted it to begin with, and when I joined…the girl that was chair when I was a freshman came up to me and asked if I wanted to run the [organization] after she graduated, and I felt honored, basically, because a lot of things in the Native American culture are honored, and anything that’s like passed down is usually an honoring aspect of it, so I felt very honored myself to even have this chance to run the club…”
Carney, when speaking on the different aspects of Native American culture, said that "a lot of people don’t know Native Americans still exist to this day, so my point was to make it that they do exist and that we are still around, and we are like normal people like everyone else walking around.”
NACA is currently preparing their next big event of the semester, the UNH "Powwow,” being held in the Granite State Room on Nov. 4 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., which is slated to present a number of Native American dancers and singers, as well as Native American vendors offering a variety of crafts, clothing, jewelry and other goods for sale.
Originally published in The New Hampshire in Vol. 107, No. 8, on Oct. 19, 2017.