Tim Lennie is no stranger to the traditional Dene drum.
"I was very young SA国际影视传媒� the first drum I ever tried to repair or try to make was when I must have been 18 or 19 years old," he said. "I've definitely been observing over the years."
Lennie, former chief of Pehdzeh Ki First Nation in Wrigley, has been repairing drums for years, he said, and was able to explain what goes into making one.
"Making sure you have the right wood," he said for starters, noting white pine and birch as some common examples. "The skin itself, it varies from nation to nation. Some use deer, some use buffalos, some use beavers."
The hide and wood chosen for a drum will affect how the instrument sounds, he added.
"Caribou hide is very thin, so there's a very high-pitched sound," said Lennie, adding that which parts of an animal's hide gets used will also play a role. "Whether they use the belly side or how think you scrape it to make a higher tone and so on."
From what Lennie understands, Indigenous people would historically use drums to send messages, and which drum was selected to communicate would depend on how far its sound carried. But these days, drums are mostly used for hand games and drum dances, he said.
Most of the time when Lennie has to repair a drum, it comes down to fixing the hide or restringing it, as drums tend to have ribbons of caribou hide across them, he added.
The use of caribou and other species should be accompanied by gratitude, according to Lennie.
"You have to have respect for the animal," he said. ""Knowing the whole purpose of the drum and the significance of it is more important than actually building the drum. It's something that we have to respect as men because we have taken another life, and that life itself fed you. So it really has significance how all those things come together to better one's community and one individual."
Lennie said repairing drums serves as a healing tool for himself and can give him peace of mind.
When it comes to making music out of the drums, every person has a song, he said.
"When I'm drumming with some of the young people, I'm always trying to make sure that maybe they could try and find that song within themselves."
A drum's ability to bring people together and to share is what makes it so vital to his Dene community, he said, adding he wants to instill that mindset in young men.
"I was taught to respect the drum," said Lennie. "You release, you lay everything on the floor and you leave it there. You don't take it back. So, that's the significance of drum, it's all about healing."
