The journey of the Grade 10 students at St. Laurent School has been enriching and transformative. Through hands-on experience, they not only learned how to create traditional hand drums from scratch but also delved into their heritage and identity.
This initiative nurtures a deep connection with Indigenous culture, fostering understanding and appreciation among students.
Four years ago, St. Laurent School received a grant from the Teacher Idea Fund to implement more Indigenous teachings in the school. That money allows a few women to come to teach Michif to the younger students, students to make their own moccasin slippers, students to build planter boxes to go in the community, and the drum-making workshop led by Industrial Arts teacher Kyle Lavallee.
With a student body that has an 80 percent Indigenous population, St. Laurent School’s current principal, Bobby Ellis, came up with the initiative for the Teacher Idea Fund as a way of building community within the school. Lavallee is Indigenous himself and said growing up; his family suppressed their culture, so he didn’t have many, if any, Metis influences. He’s spent his adult years trying to figure out his Indigenous identity, learning what it means to be Metis, and what that represents for him.
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“To be able to tap into that culture piece and give them something they probably didn’t have a lot of exposure to at home…just to give them that piece at school and allow the kids to feel a little more accepted and explore their culture at school is so important,” he said. “I resonated with that because I was one of those kids that didn’t understand that culture on one side.”
As Lavallee is the Industrial Arts teacher, it was deemed he would run the drum-making workshop. Before St. Laurent School started the program, they brought an Elder from Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation to teach Lavallee how to make a traditional hand drum. For months, the pair worked at the craft, and now, Lavallee’s taught four Grade 10 woodshop classes the same thing.
“He passed that knowledge onto me and now I’m passing it onto the kids,” he said.
The traditional hand drum represents the heartbeat of Mother Earth and a relationship with all living things. According to Indigenous Tourism BC, the circle represents balance, equality, wholeness, and connection. The creator is the centre of the circle, and around are all living things. Each animal, plant, and human is the same distance from the centre, and the drum voices the connection to all creation while strengthening the connection to each other.
The workshop takes about half a semester to complete as every material needed for the drum is made from scratch. The class uses the CNC machine to cut the rings for the drums from plywood, then sands them down and wraps them in a fabric with glue, which Lavallee said is a modern take on the traditional style. The rawhide the students use for the drums comes from a place in Winnipeg and is of elk or buffalo. They cut the hides and make the strings for the drums themselves too, making the entire process a custom one.
At the end of the semester, students from younger classes come to the woodshop, and the Grade 10s teach them how to make the hand drums.
“They pass that knowledge on,” said Lavallee. “It kind of fits in with the whole community building — it’s letting the kids know they’re a piece of the school. It gives them a sense of confidence and pride in the work they do, and it gives the younger kids something to look forward to.”
This year, Prairie Rose School Division (PRSD) Indigenous Academic Achievement and Literacy Leader Crystal Millar-Courchene will be leading a Feast of the Drums celebration. The ceremonial gathering honours and celebrates drums through drumming, singing, prayer, and a shared feast. Lavallee said they’re making stew and Bannock for all who participated in the drum making this year, and at their Feast of the Drums, they’ll bless the drums they’ve made, play them, and eat together.
Then, the students will get to take their drums home, and any extras will stay in the school’s music program. Lavallee said art students may also have a project of designing and painting their drums next semester.
He said though the Metis culture in St. Laurent is more focused on fiddling and jigging rather than drum making and playing, the workshop still touches all cultures within the school’s diverse student population.
“It allows them to connect with their culture in ways not a lot of people have the ability to,” said Lavallee. “It’s not every day people get the opportunity to go out and build a drum from scratch. It gives them something more than math. It gives them tangible hands-on activities to help them connect with who they are and understand who they are and where they come from.”
He added that the process of making the drums and the satisfaction of completing the project gives the students self-confidence and pride in their culture.
