Strangers and old friends gathered to work on spontaneous designs for their representations of the dreamcatcher – each string and thread that become intertwined holding their own, new symbolic meaning.

As part of Unity Week, Student Activities hosted a Native Culture Appreciation event Feb. 21. The event, which took place at Cafe Rouge inside the Elliott Student Union was not just about creating dreamcatchers for Unity Week but was also an incentive to get students excited about the 2019 Trading Moon Pow Wow that is scheduled for March 9, according to graduate student, Haydee Reyes.

Reyes, a first-year graduate student who helped run the event, said the event’s purpose was to create and educate people about the origin and the purpose of dreamcatchers.

“A lot of times people just see it as a fun decoration,”  Reyes said.  “They are making representations of dreamcatchers as there are qualities that make a dreamcatcher authentic.”

Several students participated in the event, and while they were from different cultures and backgrounds, the event brought people together to learn as a community about Native American culture and the origins of dreamcatchers.

Marissa Ginger, a junior undergraduate student, said making a representation of a dreamcatcher was a nice stress reliever.  Ginger said her favorite part about learning about the origins of the dreamcatcher was the symbolism of the beads.

“Some believe the beads symbolize the spider of the web or some believe that the beads symbolize the good dreams that cannot pass through the web, immortalizing the form of sacred charms,”  she said.

Chris Ekengren, a junior undergraduate student, said his favorite part of the event was starting out with an idea and creating a design out of it.

“A lot of the different materials they use have a lot of different symbolism behind them,” Ekengren said. Regarding the concept of unity, Reyes said unity “is more about taking all of our differences and then embracing those, but also embracing the differences of others and being open and welcome to share those differences.”

While sharing stories and listening to the others around her, Ginger said unity is “everyone understanding everyone else’s differences, or not necessarily understanding, but being aware and respecting everyone’s differences, and coming together for a greater cause, whether to create dreamcatchers or to solve a problem.”

As Ekengren created and worked on his design, he said unity is the inclusion of absolutely everybody, whether you agree with them or not.

“It’s about everybody coming together, forming a community, supporting each other and just finding a way to generally better each other’s lives,” he said.