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'As long as there is breath in my lungs'
Peter Paulette vows to continue cultural tradition of drumming in Fort Smith

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, May 12, 2014

THEBACHA/FORT SMITH
Traditional drumming is as much a part of Peter Paulette as the air he breathes.

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Peter Paulette teaches traditional Dene drumming in Fort Smith. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

"The passion that I have, it's a very unexplainable passion," he said, noting drumming is something he does for the love of it.

"It's part of me," he said. "That's how I look at it."

Paulette, of Fort Smith, said the caribou hide and the birch tree used to make drums connect drummers to the land through their songs, and make them stronger and prouder as Dene people.

His introduction to the power of the drum occurred when he was about seven or eight years old.

Paulette, who is now in his mid-40s, tells a story of people visiting his late grandmother, and drumming for her in what he now believes was a tribute to her as a medicine carrier and midwife.

"I remember they started pulling out drums. That was my first experience, I think," he recalled, estimating four elders were drumming.

"I could just feel the vibration through me," he said, noting the little house was also vibrating. "Within that moment, this is what I wanted to do. This is part of who I am."

Paulette, who is of Chipewyan heritage, noted drumming had not been preserved in Fort Smith as in some other NWT communities.

"There was no drumming for a long time," he said, estimating it may have largely disappeared in Fort Smith in any organized way for close to 80 years, except for some elders who drummed on their own.

His explanation of that long gap is Fort Smith's location on the Slave River - a main travel route before roads - and the Dene people living there being affected by southern influences. In addition, he said the church frowned on traditional cultural practices, such as drumming.

In 1996, Paulette, a member of Smith's Landing First Nation, was instrumental in launching a traditional drumming group in Fort Smith with a group of about eight relatives and friends - all men in keeping with the Dene tradition that only males drum.

"I guess there was something missing within me and my brothers and other people that were from Fort Smith," he said. "So we said 'let's start a drumming group.'"

During that first summer, they played three songs over and over.

"We didn't know them that well, but we sung them with passion," Paulette recalled. "That was the first time people heard drums for a long time. Every other night, we were drumming."

In the following years, they expanded their knowledge of drumming with the help of an elder from Dettah and another from Tulita.

Before the group formed in Fort Smith, drummers would be invited from Yellowknife or the Hay River Reserve to play for drum dances.

"That was the only time you'd have a drum dance," said Paulette.

The Fort Smith group still drums, but not as often as in the past. These days, it is for occasional drum dances, and special events.

Paulette feels it is important to have drumming back in Fort Smith, and he is doing his best to keep it alive and pass it on by offering drumming lessons.

"I think it was just part of our culture as Dene people to pass on the drumming to whoever wants to teach it, who wants to learn it and has that passion to learn," he said.

Since Christmas, Paulette has been teaching drumming on Sundays at Northern Life Museum - and hand games on Wednesdays at Aurora College - even though he sometimes shows up to teach only to end up practising alone.

"Sometimes it's difficult to continue when I'm sitting there by myself and I'm drumming by myself and I think about, well, is it worth it to keep going?" he said. "Is Fort Smith ready still?"

Paulette admitted sometimes thinking the town is not ready, and that is frustrating, but he is encouraged when anyone shows up and is keen to learn drumming.

Asked if he is optimistic about the future of drumming in Fort Smith, Paulette responded by declaring his dedication to teaching the cultural tradition.

"I think as long as there is breath in my lungs, the drumming will stay here," he said. "I'll keep teaching it. If I'm 80 years old kneeling down there, so be it. And if there's only me there, so be it."

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