How a dream catcher was put to good use

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‘More recently, dream catchers are being used as a shared symbol of hope and healing. For instance, the Little Thunderbirds Drum and Dance Troupe from the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota have traveled to other schools that have experienced loss and school shooting and gifted them with a dream catcher. The dream catcher has now been passed from Red Lake to students at Columbine, Colorado; Sandy Hook, Marysville; Marysville, Washington; Townville, South Carolina; and Parkland, Florida.’ (Source)

‘The Story Behind the Dream Catcher That Became a Healing Symbol for School Shooting Survivors - days after a gunman murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, Anthony Salvatore was sitting at his desk, in a daze, thinking about the victims.

As a former assistant principal at Sandy Hook, Salvatore knew most of them. 

Out of the blue he got a call from a woman in Minnesota, with a tale that left him sobbing. Students from Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota, where seven people were killed in a 2005 shooting, wanted to drive to Newtown, Conn., to give them a dream catcher, a Native American talisman that is meant to fend off bad dreams, to help the Newtown community heal. 

The dream catcher was made after two students killed a dozen students and a teacher in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. After the Red Lake shooting, some Columbine students took the dream catcher to the Red Lake Indian Reservation. 

A Gift for Columbine Survivors - “We were like everybody else, we thought we would give something that came from our hearts,” said Debra Gutowski, a member of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians in Muskegon, Mich., who created the dream catcher. 

“We were sorrowed and saddened, too, so we gifted the dream catcher to heal the people, as we do with our children,” said Gutowski, who had made dream catchers for years and who was asked by students she works with to make one for Columbine. “We gift them to our babies so that they heal, have good dreams, [and] wake up to do good things.” 

The dream catcher Gutowski created is encased in a shadow box frame, and it bears an inscription in the Ottawa language, that, loosely translated, means “all our relations,” or “we’re all family.” (Source)

Let’s continue - The healing symbol has been passed to other school communities

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