About This Resource
Powwow Day is a children’s book by Traci Sorell, an award-winning author and enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation known for her books celebrating Native American culture. The book is beautifully illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight, a Chickasaw artist and Rhode Island School of Design graduate who brings a vivid sense of Indigenous heritage to her artwork. In Powwow Day, Traci Sorell highlights a specific form of powwow dance and regalia, the jingle dress dance, recognized and known for its healing properties. River, a young girl recovering from illness, longs to participate in the healing jingle dress dance at the powwow celebration but must sit out as she recovers her strength. Watching and listening to her sister, cousins, and friends dance jingle—feather fans waving and metal cones clinking—fills River’s heart with hope. The jingle dance brings health and balance to participants and observers, and specifically to River in her own story of healing. This sacred dance, originating from Ojibwe traditions during the 1918 flu pandemic, combines song, movement, and the spiritual energy of the dress’s jingles to help heal.