Drums can mimic speech, issue battle orders, maintain rhythm in a jazz performance, or invite friends to gather. They can be made of natural or synthetic materials and take a form as simple as a hollowed-out log or as flashy as a glittery red snare in a 16-piece kit.

The drum is one of the oldest communication tools. It was used for two-way communication long before the advent of the telephone and sends an immediate message to anybody who can hear it.

For Indigenous people in present-day British Columbia, drums are more than communication tools and musical instruments; they are tools for a lifelong connection to and relationship with all living things and the Creator.

Many drum teachings by First Nations in BC use the circle to represent balance and equality, wholeness and connection. The circle is unbroken and made of equal, connected, and infinite points. The Creator is the center, around which all living things—including humans, sit. Each animal, plant, and human is the same distance from this center and has a unique and direct connection to it. The drum voices our connection to all creation when we drum and strengthens our connection to each other when we drum together.

Circular drums are made by stretching an animal hide over a wooden frame that can be small enough to fit in a child’s hand or large enough to seat a six-member host drum at powwow. There are also different traditions. For example, the Tsimshian and Kwakwaka’wakw also make and play box drums, which are rectangular.

The playing of the drum helps us listen to our soul so we can understand our purpose and our connection to each other in the Circle of Life. The drum is female and human. The big drum was a gift from the women to the men a very long time ago, so that men could experience a resonant connection to the Earth Mother that naturally occurs with women. This is why it has been a tribal custom (in most tribes) that women not sit at the drum or play it.