THE DRUMS OF KRISTEN SCHOLFIELD-SWEET
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
My
training began, not with any awareness of it as such, but with
an attraction to drums. From my earliest experiences with them
they have seemed living beings to me. As a pre-schooler I spent
many summer evenings with my parents watching native people dance
between features at the local drive-in movie. Although now neither
First Nations people nor non-native businesses would consider
such exploitation, during the early 1950's the sounds from shell
leggings, tin tingles, rattles and dance drums were some of my
first musical impressions.
As a junior high art teacher, I attended pow wows with a native
family whose children were in my art classes. Their willingness
to include me in their culture's art gave me opportunities to
watch drums being assembled, prepared, and played.
When I returned to my art teaching at the Nova Scotia College
of Art and Design from a sabbatical in 1986, I was invited to
join a shamanic drumming circle based on the teachings of Michael Harner.
I seemed unable to 'journey' as other participants were able
to do. This became very frustrating to me until another member
of the circle journeyed for me to his power animals to ask "Why
is Kristen blind?" (i.e. unable to see Spirit) He returned
with the answer, "This is the wrong drum. She has to make
her own." This man (who had never built a drum and did not
know me before this experience) also brought back quite detailed
instructions of where I was to find materials and how I was to
proceed with their construction.
This first drum took a year and a half of problem solving, detective
work, and trial-and-error education before I was ready with a
hoop of spruce lathing from a lumberyard, a goat skin scraped
clean using a large serving spoon with a sharpened rim, and a
holder for the back which had a previous life as the ring holding
open a lobster trap. By the time the drum had dried but failed
to hold its shape, and been rebuilt with little more than dogged
determination to guide the process, I was hooked by this ancient
process and its powerful materials.
Across these fourteen years, the drum has been my main access
through the physical into the realm of Spirit. Each task of preparation
has come wrapped in layers of symbolism and story. Obtaining
hides obliged me to confront our hunting and slaughtering practices
with animals, which led me to perform ceremonies of respect and
apology to the deer. Building hoops required me to learn to operate
power sanders, planers and saws, which led me to confidence in
situations where my gender and upbringing offered little permission
for success. Obtaining wood for the hoops obliged me to consider
our logging practices, which led me to preform ceremonies of
respect and apology to the trees.
The simple equation of drum construction--something
stretchy fastened around something stiff--opened to lessons about
trusting subtlety. I felt the wisdom of my hands touching rather
than of my brain calculating. I learned to pay attention to the
whole continuum of consequences that radiate out from such simple
activities as scraping, rinsing, cutting, and drying. I came
to understand that the making of each drum is a contract that
includes cost as well as reward. I experienced how the expression
of gratitude to the tree and animal is the way into right relationship
with the web of energy that connects us all.
Human
teachers have provided a less ongoing, but no less valuable,
access through the physical into the realm of the Sacred. This
help has come in casual comments rather than in formal training.
I heard stories about an old native Grandmother who kept hides
soaking in a washtub behind the stove; the family knowing the
skins were ready when the stench drove everyone outside. Old
timers shared descriptions of fastening hides to frames and submerging
them in moving water so bacteria would loosen flesh and hair
that would then be carried downstream. Friends loaned me rusted
fleshing scrapers retrieved from cluttered tool sheds and ulu
knives received as travel mementos. I found drawings in a 1911
publication showing scraping boards and procedures for using
slaked lime when soaking skins.
I continue to use the instructions
given in the shamanic vision received by my university colleague
back in 1986, and over the years have developed my own protocol
for the completion, decoration, and playing of my drums. Although
I now build a variety of rattles and other tools for shamanic
use, my drums have remained the primary physical guide and spiritual
metaphor for my shamanic practice. One might say, therefore,
that although I am trained as a visual artist and art educator,
I am spirit-directed, through my life experiences, to be a drum
maker. This is as it should be I think, because I believe the
only appropriate credentials a drum maker can have, ultimately,
are the voices of her drums.
Many people ask me about where I obtain my hides, and do I know
anything about how their lives were taken and for what purposes.
The quick answer is "I have three main sources and yes,
I try to take in as much information about each deer as I can."
About 1/3 of my skins come from
hunters here on Cortes
Island; many are old timers" who have hunted for winter
meat for years, and who call to say they--or a neighbor or friend--just
"got their deer" and would I like the skin? Sometimes
a hide will just appear in a plastic bag on my porch. When I
know who took the animal, I ask questions about where it happened,
and how the hunter felt, and what the deer did.
Less often I will hear of a road
kill deer and receive a hide this way. Some people are uncomfortable
using a skin from an animal who died "needlessly",
but I often find that the energy around the hide is quite calm
and easy to work with, since the emotional charge just before
the death was surprise, rather than fear or escape.
Most of my skins come from a slaughter
house where the owner's manner combines respect and a business-like
attitude that I like. The man who prepares these hides peels
them in the traditional way, rather than uses a knife to remove
the skin, which gives me a clean cut-free hide.
When
I first receive a skin I lay it out so I am looking at its inner
surface. I thank the deer for its gift and feel the energy around
the condition of the skin. I gaze with a light trance into the
patterns of color and texture I see, and read the images that
emerge as symbolic of the coming drum's vibration and spirit
presence. Afterwards I make notes about the age and appearance
of the skin, plus any sensations I felt. It is these notes that
I use to first connect you with the deer that is coming to be
your drum. Ho!
Kristen