Stella Calahasen,
Dream Catcher
Theytus Books, 2009.

Ages 8+

Young Marin is afraid to go to sleep.  Each night in her dreams a terrifying creature, half-woman half-spider, attempts to trap and eat her.  She wakes screaming and has a hard time focusing at school because she is so tired.  What will make the nightmares stop?

Eventually Marin’s mother consults her own mother, Marin’s Kohkom, who lives in a trailer out on the reserve about three hours drive from the city.  Kohkom thinks Marin should talk to a tribal elder, a man named Maskwa, about her dreams. At first, the idea of sharing her nightmares with a stranger is almost as terrifying as the nightmares themselves, but eventually Marin agrees to give it a try.

While she is apprehensive about meeting Maskwa, Marin is excited to be visiting Kohkom where she can explore the woods and eat special foods like Saskatoon berry pie.  On the evening of their arrival, Kohkom gets out some red, yellow, blue, and white ribbons and explains to Marin the colors of the Medicine Wheel.  “Blue is for your mind, white for the spirit, red for the body and yellow for the emotions,” Khokom explains.  She asks Marin to think hard about what colors she needs help with as she is to present those ribbons to Maskwa the following day.

While she is a little shy at first, meeting Maskwa turns out not to be as scary as Marin had imagined.  He teaches her that her dreams are actually a window onto her Cree heritage, and Marin is able to turn the terror into something powerful by understanding the history and legends of her people.

Stella Calahasen is a member of the Woodland Cree First Nation and grew up hearing her parents tell Cree stories and legends that had been handed down through generations. She continued this tradition of storytelling with her own children and was inspired to write books that would give other children insight into the Cree people. Dream Catcher, rich with symbols and customs from Cree culture, and peppered with Cree dialogue throughout, is her first book. Like the true symbolism in Marin’s dreams, it shines a light on Cree culture in a way that children will easily relate to, whether familiar with it or not.

Abigail Sawyer
April 2010