Len Harris has been supporting Wolvestuff and everything about Native Americans. Here she explains the importance of preserving American wolves, and the Native American Culture. Read her thoughts about it. She also gave an awesome guide for making dreamcatchers!
”Hi, name is Len Harris and I like to introduce you to Wolvestuff. Wolvestuff is not another place just to go by something.Wolvestuff is established to help teach people about the plague of our American Wolf, they’re endangered and they’re almost extinct. If you read all the stories that are put on to Wolvestuff to help educate you, and help you learn what you can do to help save our wolves before it’s too late.
Today, I’m here to introduce the Dreamcatcher kit. My first time to see a dreamcatcher was at a powwow, I have never been to one before and seeing the Indians and their original outfits that they wore decades ago and the drum song which is, moved my very soul, my heart beat with each beat of that drum. I loved it. It stirred my soul and made me so excited just… It, it put me someplace, put something into me that I didn’t know was there.
I’ve been following wolves since I was in junior high. Reading books about ‘em, collecting things and in my house right now, every room that you go in to, there’s wolves, they’re everywhere and I love them and I want to protect them. But the dreamcatcher kit, I bought my first dreamcatcher at the powwow, I was in love with it and I wanted more, so I went to the crafts store and I bought the rings and I bought the special string, it’s a waxy … like it’s, the, it got park that’s what they do it with us, on how they make their… their thread.
It’s kinda like that except it’s manmade, of course and so you take your dreamcatcher and first thing you do is say a prayer. Because during the whole process of making a dreamcatcher, you’re saying a prayer for: if it’s for you, then you say prayers for you, about you, your family, anything, it will help.
It’ll make you feel better and it might help protect you from having all the worries that you have because a dreamcatcher stops the bad stuff coming in, in the web and lets the good stuff come in through the center.
This dreamcatcher is about 20 years old. Now, I made this for my son and it’s in for a feather refurbish but as you can see the webbing is all intact. You start your dreamcatcher by making your knot on to your, your ring, take down the edge so it doesn’t move while you’re trying to create your design.
You kinda have to measure the circumference, like, to know how many loops you can put in, like 3 or 4 inches apart or if it’s smaller then it’s only a couple of inches apart but you go around and you put your first layer of webbing in and then you count and you have to make it tight, you have to keep it taut, and then you also have to remember to think good thoughts and say some prayers.
The second layer goes in almost the same way, you go in, you go over and you pull it back around and then you go to the next one then you have to center them properly to keep your dreamcatcher in balance, you go to the center of each of your loops and that’s where’s your next one will go and then you go to the next one and the next one and you keep on going until you get all the way to the center.
Now you can make your hole as big as you want to because this is a big dreamcatcher, it made my hole quite large. They also, the design in the center, the star-shaped that it has, that’s when you balance out your webbing.
Sometimes it comes out with some real cool designs in the center but that takes a long time to learn how to measure and how to keep each one in place and if you want to, you can add beads, if you don’t want to… Your first time, you probably shouldn’t cause it’s pretty hard just to get the webbing down right but after that you keep practicing, you can do it over the same dreamcatcher and start the same thing over and over again until you get it right and then you put your feathers on it.
You match it to whatever decors in your house, it doesn’t matter. You cannot use eagle feathers, either it’s all kinds of feathers out there but eagle feathers are solemn. They are special, they are only touched by the chief and the medicine man of your tribe and during the pow wow while everyone was dancing, someone lost an eagle feather and the whole thing stopped.
Everything went still and then medicine man went over, prayed and picked it up and then it started all over again. It was, it was awesome, so have fun making your first dreamcatcher and if you make one, you’ll make more, it’s kind of an addiction.
It helps you relax, it helps knowing that you’re making it to someone special and that your heart is into it and your spirit and your blessing and little kids like them and if you tell them that story, that bad dreams get caught in the web and the good dreams come through to you, it helps them sleep and relax and when they’re scared at night, they've got their dreamcatcher.
My grandson loved it. In the first night, he said, ”Ma, it really worked” and he still has the same dreamcatcher and he’s turned twenty and I just keep changing his feathers to whatever colors he goes to.
So, you can wrap your dreamcatcher in a leather, binding or you can just leave it, the color, just the metal coming through but I made dreamcatchers from grapevine, I made a dreamcatcher on the middle of it. I had it outside for a while but the dreamcatcher decayed. The web was still good but the dreamcatcher wasn’t. so get yourself a dreamcatcher. Make one. Catch some dreams. Have a good day and thank you for coming to Wolvestuff.”