On June 21st, Miss Lisa invited some of her friends Mrs. Margaret Williams and Mr. Randy Tait to come to our school. We had some nice workshop to make some handmade crafts on that day. My favorite workshop is the dream catcher workshop. An aboriginal woman taught us how to make a dream-catcher. I was impressed by the legend of the dream-catcher so I did some research about the dream-catcher. A dream-catcher is a handmade willow hoop, on which is woven a net or web. It is believed that dream-catchers originated with Asibaikaashi who was known as the Spider Woman. She was a custodian of all the infants and the adults. It became a difficult task for her to take enough care of all the Ojibwe people as they started spreading geographically even to the hooks and crannies of North America. The women were in charge of weaving the magical webs for the infants. The women made this possible by using willow hoops and sinew to weave the webs. The children were provided with charms as a medium of protection. These charms were idealized to catch any sort of harm that might be present around that place or time. Each part of the dream catcher had meanings tied to the physical world. One notable meaning is the dream-catcher has a round shape which represents the earth’s physical shape. The web absorbs terrible dreams at night and discharges them during the day with the sun shining on them. The feathers act like ladders allowing good dreams to descend on the infant or adult who is sleeping. I think making a dream catcher is quite interesting as I am not good at visual art but I can still make a unique dream-catcher for myself. While we were making our handcraft, Miss Lisa performed a traditional first nation’s dance to us. Her performance was really great and I really enjoyed it! This was the first time I experienced aboriginal day and it brought me a great memory for my high school life! By: Narrissa Kwok