IMAGE : Mitch Thevarge

The author, Wendy Goldsmith, and her first drum at the Squamish Lil'Wat Cultural Centre

Drums are good medicine.

The best part about making a drum at the Squamish Lil’Wat Cultural Centre (in Whistler) was not poking a lace through holes in the wet deer hide. It wasn’t admiring the pleasing regularity of my lacings, or carefully wrapping the crosshair handle at the back. Because after all, what was I going to do with a drum?

To have occasion to play a traditional handheld drum I’d need new friends, a new social calendar and definitely a different sense of rhythm than the one I was born with.

Of course, the Cultural Centre solved most of these problems with a traditional First Nations rule: You must give away the first drum you make. Mine was going in the gift shop to be sold, along with 300 others, for $150 apiece – proceeds to benefit the First Nations performers singing and dancing at the Centre during the Games.

What I liked best was that Mitch Thevarge, our young teacher, had brought his partner, Tanis, son Max and baby Mia, who toddled around the circular room (a replica of an underground pit house) laughing in a brown, fringed First Nations-inspired dress and braided cedar tiara (see pics in our photo gallery).

And that Mitch explained his drum hide was lighter coloured than ours because his Auntie had cured it with deer brains.

Make Drums, Absorb Culture

So what I’m saying is…I don’t need a drum, and I really don’t need drum-making skills for any future endeavors, but taking a workshop at the Cultural Centre is valuable just for hanging out eavesdropping and visiting in someone else’s community. In a way it reminded me of being perched on a stool at my mother’s church, listening to the turkey supper crew or quilting ladies gossip affectionately about the neighbours. I don’t necessarily want to move home and get a membership, but it always makes me feel cozy and included.

While complaining about our sad lacing abilities, we also heard charming anecdotes from Maxine Joseph-Bruce about shrinking her handmade white leather graduation dress in the wash after letting her young daughter (then a toddler) crawl around in it. A member of the Lil’Wat First Nation, she’s now a land officer with the Mount Currie band and just dropped by to chat and make us feel welcome.

She made her own drum six years ago, but still hasn’t chosen an image to paint on the front. Unlike our teacher Mitch, who painted a wise skull on his drum face, Maxine is still waiting for a sign or feeling to tell her what to paint. The image is important, they explain, because it protects both the player and the listener from the “Bad Medicine” (negative feelings or poor luck) or that may collect in the instrument’s hollow back and scatter when it’s next played.

We also heard stories about Maxine’s heavy-handed great-uncles who annoyed her grandmother by beating too hard and breaking her drum at a pow wow. And about someone else in the community (don’t ask who – it’s a secret), who right this minute has a deer hide hanging on his fence that anyone can take if they need it. And about the drumming and singing ceremony the Band office had held the night before to prepare the community’s minds for the upcoming frenzy of the Olympics. With so many tourists, traffic, trips into the city, changes to schedules, performances and events, it would be easy to stumble across some bad medicine.

The Result: One Deer Hide Drum

In the end, the deer hide got laced and stretched over the wooden frame. Mitch said that it looked okay – or at least it would do once it dried and shrank. And Tracy Howlett, the workshop organizer, assured me that everyone’s efforts would definitely be for sale in the gift shop. I didn’t even mind if they were only being nice.

To take part in your own workshop on drum-making, wool or cedar-bark weaving, or many others, check out the Squamish Lil’Wat Cultural Centre website. During the Olympics, in addition to their usual programming, they’re also hosting plenty of family friendly events such as storytelling, theatre and dance performances.