Description:

Team Kwe is unique; we are a group of three women all with Indigenous heritage and close ties with our community. As this is our first year working together, and we wanted to create a piece that is beautiful and has significance. Together we decided to draw on Maggie’s strength as a textile artist and create a work about our culture’s ever important “Jingle Dress”. Historically, The Jingle Dress was originally created during the 1918 flu pandemic to help heal those who were sick. The story goes that the granddaughter of an Ojibwe Medicine Man fell ill with the flu. The man had a recurring dream that 4 Native women were wearing this new kind of dress, dancing around and bringing healing to all around them. The women in the dream taught the man how to make the dress, what songs to play, and how to perform the dance, and that this would make his granddaughter well again. The community then gathered to create this special dress, and still perform the Jingle Dress Dance to this day at pow-wows and ceremonies across the country. As three Kwe women, we create this Jingle Dress to help bring healing to those who are suffering during the pandemic, and to bring healing to our community and the country. Additionally, Heather and Juliana’s grandmother was a Jingle Dress dancer, and Maggie herself danced Jingle Dress at ceremonies and pow wows in her youth.

Team Bio:

Team Kwe: Heather Friedli (St. Paul), Maggie Thompson (St. Paul), and Juliana Welter (Minneapolis) Team Kwe is a group of 3 women artists, each with ties to the Anishinaabe community. Heather Friedli, Team Captain, is an oil painter who lives in Saint Paul and first generation descendant of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, and has family heritage with the Indigenous peoples of Sonora Mexico. Heather creates landscape paintings about the natural word, creating Land and Heritage Inspired Art. Heather has been sculpting snow for 13 years, winning both the State Snow Sculpting Championship in 2016, and the National Snow Sculpting Championship in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 2019 on Team Dino Fight. Juliana Welter is Heather’s sister, and an independent artist and a black belt & karate teacher in Minneapolis, MN. This is Juliana’s 3rd season sculpting snow, and is excited to be back at the State Fairgrounds creating work. Maggie Thompson is a textile artist and member of the Fond du Lac Tribe of Ojibwe, residing in Saint Paul, MN. Maggie is well known nationally for her intricately knitted cowls and hats, and has been showcased in several museums regionally for both her textiles and performance artworks. Lately she has become the face of Indigenous mask wearing and creation during the pandemic, with her work appearing in the New York Times, and on billboards across the Twin Cities adorning her “Ribbon Masks” based on our culture’s Ribbon Skirts worn on ceremonial occasions.

Fun Fact:

As three Kwe women, we create this large scale Jingle Dress to help bring healing to those who are suffering during the pandemic, and to bring healing to our community and our country. We will be the first all woman, all Anishinaabe snow sculpting team to participate in the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.