Rainbow Dream Dance

Origins of the Sun Dance, and a modern revival

Welcome to the Rainbow Dream Dance, a communal celebration of the web of life within the heart of the Blessed Isles of Britain and Ireland, inspired by the beauty of Native American ceremony and blended with the sings of these Blessed Isles and beyond.

For countless centuries many of the Native people of America and those of the First Nations of Canada practised the Sun Dance. This was a living prayer for world renewal, for thanksgiving and, above all, a celebration of life. When the people came together to Dance they would sing, drum, laugh, cry, trade, sit in council, renew old bonds and make new ones not only with their human brothers and sisters but also with all their relations upon the Grandmother that we know as Earth. They knew in their bones that as they came together every year to Dance, then all the marvellous inter-weavings of Life on this planet would be safeguarded in their hearts and so the human contribution to life on Earth would be one of balance and beauty.

European settlers put a stop to this. They saw the powerful part it played in the life of the people and alongside the iniquities of the reservations the Sun Dance was all but abolished in the last years of the 19th century. It was sustained away from prying eyes by, amongst others, the Shoshone, neighbours of the Crows. In 1934 the prohibition was lifted, but by now the ways of the Dance were all but forgotten. In the early Forties the Crows asked John Trehero, a Shoshone man, to help them revive their Sun Dance. In 1943 Tom Yellowtail danced for the first time and twenty years later Trehero told Yellowtail that his spirit Grandfathers had asked him to pass on authority as Dance Chief to Yellowtail. In the Fifties, the Yellowtail family adopted a young Metis called Hyemeyohsts Storm, and Storm picked up the threads that the Crow had woven. It was the coming time for the Metis, those of mixed blood, usually Native American and European. It fell to them to take the Native teachings out to a wider world, and to build rainbow bridges around the world.

It is within this spiritual lineage that our own Dance Chief, Arwyn DreamWalker has held the visions of Storm and other Native Grandfathers. Their vision saw humans coming together in service of the evolutionary dream of Grandmother Earth and the Sisterhood of Planets and so sends out the call to people of all colours, lineages and creeds who serve such a dream. Arwyn DreamWalker brought the Rainbow Dream Dance to Europe twenty two years ago as she responded to the call in the 1980s from the Blessed Isles of Britain and Ireland. This call was voiced by Raven, a visionary Northumbrian teacher who had travelled to Mexico bringing a call from the Blessed Isles with a weaving of the Medicine Wheel of the Americas and the Runic wisdom of northern Europe. The Rainbow Dream Dance that found emergence responded to such a call, honoured its diverse lineages, and bent to listen to those ancestors yet to be born.

There has been a Rainbow Dream Dance on British soil every year since, holding precious this celebration of life, this blending of peoples, this quest for the future.

How do I join the Dance? What actually happens?

The simplest answer to questions like this is talk to someone who has done it. If you have come to this site without knowing anyone who’s danced before, please ring one of us. We would love to chat it through with you. A list of names and phone numbers is to the right hand side.