Raven loves the round dances of his people. His favorite part is watching the ribbon skirts and imagining “he’s swirling in a rainbow.” When he asks his grandmother if a boy could wear a ribbon skirt, however, she replies that she’s never seen a boy in one.
That night, however, thinking of all the unique ribbon skirts she’s made and the individuals who have worn them, she sews—and the next morning, presents Raven with a ribbon skirt of his own, in the colors of the rainbow. “I’ve lived for a long time, Nosesim, and I’m lucky to see beautiful things that I’ve never seen before,” she tells him, a powerful line of affirmation.
At the next round dance, “The drums sing to the people. The people dance to their songs.” And Raven and his Grandma are the first on the dance floor, leading the way round and round.
Cree and Trinidadian author Tasha Spillett says in an author’s note that she first came to love the round dance herself when she encountered it as part of the Idle No More movement, led by “Indigenous women and Two-Spirit relatives,” which “summoned people together with round dance ceremonies and the resonating voices of the hand drums, urging them to act in defense of the land, water, and our other-than-human relatives.”
Raven’s story, she says, is a tribute to the power of the round dance, “honors the imperative of prioritizing our people over rigid cultural protocols. I wrote this story as an expression of gratitude to my Two-Spirit relatives, who have guided my thoughts and molded me into the type of person I hope our Ancestors can be proud of.”
Illustrator Daniel Ramire, a Two-Spirit Ojibwe elder, depicts Raven’s story with soft and textured acrylic-on-canvas images through which the swirl of ribbons and community connection flow.
Don’t confuse this book with the middle grade graphic novel The Ribbon Skirt, about a two-spirit Anishinaabe 10-year-old—but maybe keep that (also recommended) title in mind for when readers of this one are a little older.
Raven’s Ribbons is a lovely and evocative story of a gender creative (possibly Two-Spirit) boy finding affirmation in his family and community. Highly recommended.
(While Raven doesn’t explicitly identify as Two-Spirit in the book, I am tagging it as such since it seems possible, and readers seeking such representation may want to know of this title.)
