Dancing Feathers

Jenifer Lepiano was a writer and drama teacher in Toronto.

Tafia Shebagabow is the charming eleven-year-old girl who narrates these lively and engaging stories. In the warmer seasons Tafia lives on a reservation on Lake Nipigon, but in A Time To Be Brave it is winter and she is accompanying her father on his trapline. Here’s a girl who knows how to skin a beaver and ignore a wolf, yet, like many other children her age, she feels overcome by timidity. She has a moody older brother who teases her, and her father doesn’t always know what he wants for his children (her mother is dead) as the winds of change blow through the North. Before long, in a turn of events involving a train, a painting, and Wapegosheesh, a mouse, Tafia has her time to be brave.

In Dancing Feathers Tafia and her spunky friend Mavis get an unexpected opportunity to visit Toronto on their way to a powwow at Curved Lake. We see the city through their eyes as mishap and chance encounter turn sightseeing into an adventure. Meanwhile, tension mounts in a more internal drama. Will Tafia live up to the expectations of her friends and family? Will she dance in her jingle dress at the powwow?

Both A Time To Be Brave and Dancing Feathers are illustrated with stills from the movies they’re based on — the first two of a series of seven dramas by Paul Stephens and Eric Jordan, aired nationwide on television in both English and French. There are plans for an Ojibway translation of the series, followed by a second series of films dramatizing life in Tafia’s community. Now, thanks to Christel Kleitsch’s vivid and convincing storytelling, young readers can get to know the people of Spirit Bay, We love you, Tafia Shebagabow!