Wisconsin Life

[bright piano music] - Aerius Benton-Banai: When I started dancing jingle, I was going through a tough time in my life.

These dresses healed me, and... They mean everything to me.

[inhales] Hold on, one sec.

[dresses jingle] [drumming] The jingle dress comes from my people, the Ojibwe people.

It's believed to be a healing dress, a medicine dress.

And part of that medicine comes from the sound.

[dresses jingle] [drumming] It's almost like washing away sicknesses and illnesses.

Whatever that may be, physical, mental, emotional.

[match strikes] A lot of my inspiration comes from our cultural knowledge, our cultural teachings that I've learned from our elders, a lot of my grandmothers and aunties.

Some of my dresses are inspired by the natural world.

[water rushes] [bright music] So, I love to create dresses that are very contemporary.

But also reflect the knowledge with respect to the medicine dress.

I highly respect this dress and what it brings and what it means to the community.

But I also see this dress moving forward into the future, which I'm really, really proud to be a part of.

So, I just got done doing an interview.

In this interview, we talked about my journey of being a jingle dress dancer, a jingle dress designer.

[gentle piano music] I've learned a lot about what it means to be a part of community and what it means to be an Indigenous woman in today's society.

When you heal yourself, you can heal your family.

And when you heal your family, you can heal your community.

And it is so powerful to be a jingle dress designer, but also a jingle dress dancer.