Pulse
Beat of the Drum
Medical students and physicians are keeping a Native American tradition alive.
A wood-and-rawhide drum the size of a coffee table sits in the center of the living room in a small house in Robbinsdale, a northwest suburb of Minneapolis. Standing beside it, fourth-year medical student Charles Branch holds an abalone shell filled with burning sage; he cups the smoke with a feather, drawing it over his head and up and down his body. One by one, the other medical students, residents, and family members who have gathered here on a rainy evening in June do the same.
Then four men, all of whom are Native Americans and alumni of the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth campus take a seat around the drum. As members of a group that has been singing together for the past several years, they have gathered to sing and drum one last time before one of them, Jason Deen, M.D., who has just completed an internal medicine/pediatrics residency, leaves for a fellowship in Seattle.
As the men take their places around the drum, Branch pulls a small leather pouch from his pocket and takes a pinch of tobacco, then passes the pouch to the others who do the same. For a moment, they sit with their heads bowed, praying silently; then they sprinkle the tobacco on the head of the drum. Branch says the first song they will sing is a sending song to honor a friend’s mother who passed away not long ago. The song will help guide her spirit back to the ancestors. He explains that the woman’s family members know that they will be singing and are grateful to them.
Branch, who is the lead singer of the group, begins beating the drum with a cattail-shaped stick and singing. The others join in, and for the next 10 minutes the room is filled with a reverent but high-pitched melody punctuated by the slow-paced boom of four sticks against the drumhead.
A Blend of the Best
The University of Minnesota is the only medical school in the country that can claim having a traditional Native American drum. The Center of American Indian and Minority Health on the Duluth campus obtained it in 2005 after Branch told its director, Joy Dorscher, M.D., that for a number of years he and a group of medical students had been singing and drumming with the university’s other Native American students. Branch, who at the time had been accepted into the school but was not yet a student, wanted to find a way to bring traditional drumming and singing to the medical school. He thought it made sense because the drum was used in native cultures for community events and healing purposes. And for Native American students like himself, he thought it might be a way to blend the best of traditional healing practices with Western medicine.
Dorscher and the school’s administration liked the idea, and Branch, fellow student Jean Howell, and alumni Deen and Erik Brodt, M.D., introduced the drum to the wider student body and faculty at the 2006 Duluth campus White Coat ceremony for first-year students. Dorscher says the audience was awestruck. “The last beat of that drum sort of settled into the crowd. You could feel it. You could see the power of the drum in the faces of the people who were sitting there,” she says. Since then, the drum has been included in ceremonies on both the Duluth and Twin Cities campuses.
The majority of songs are sung in Anishinaabe, the language of people indigenous to northeastern Minnesota; but the group also sings in Dakota, Ponca, Ho-chunk, and other native languages. Most ceremonial songs function as a form of prayer, although some such as those sung at pow-wows are for honoring, celebrating, and dancing.
For Branch and the others, drumming and singing are a way to connect with their roots. “It’s not music for the sake of music,” he says, explaining that the songs serve purposes and that the singers must follow certain protocols. One of the purposes is healing. And Branch has experienced that firsthand. A year and a half after having back surgery, he was still experiencing pain. “It wasn’t until after I went through my traditional ceremonies that I was able to start running without pain,” he says. “Western medicine took me so far, but the drum in the setting of a ceremony helped complete the healing process.”
Keeping the Faith
Branch, 40, who was born and raised in San Francisco, did not grow up with the traditions of his Cherokee, Catawba, and Shawnee ancestors. “In previous generations, the politics of the day and age was to assimilate into Western society. We were encouraged and often forced to put away our identity and become American,” he says. But he began to explore his heritage during his undergraduate years at the University of California, Berkeley, and studied drumming intensively with his elders for 18 months after graduating.
Similarly, others in the medical school drum group have found drumming a way to connect with traditions they didn’t learn as children. Howell, also a member of the Cherokee nation, says he didn’t start drumming until his first year of medical school at Duluth five years ago. “A lot of Native Americans don’t grow up with traditional things. We live in cities away from reservations,” he says. Yet Howell says it felt natural to join the group. And he’s come to consider the drum more than just a musical instrument. It’s our past, he says. “The songs we sing, who knows how old they are? They’re part of our oral tradition.”
Branch explains that the drum represents mother Earth, the female life source. As men and drum come together, life is created in songs and prayers. The drum is believed to contain a spirit that needs to be protected and nurtured. “My job is to take care of it, keep it safe,” says Howell, who currently keeps the drum. As part of caring for the drum, every morning, he picks up a bit of tobacco and says a prayer before he heads to St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood, where he is a family medicine resident.
The University of Minnesota’s Dorscher says the drum has opened people’s eyes to the fact that there are traditions that are still important in native communities. Front and center at events, it has given the 40 or so Native American students at the Duluth campus a more visible presence, reminding the broader community that training doctors to work in Native American communities is part of the school’s mission.
Both Branch and Howell say that for them, singing and drumming have been a welcome respite from the rigors of studying. And both think the drum has had another unexpected benefit: “A cool thing is the way it’s brought the nonnative and native students together,” Howell says. He notes that nonnative students now request that the drum be included in events.
Branch says his hope all along was that the drum could be shared with others. “The drum has its own voice, and my biggest hope for it in the beginning was that it would get out into the community and touch people’s lives,” he says. “This has become self-evident from all the people who have come up to talk to us after we sing, to tell us how the drum made them feel and how powerful the experience was.”
Preserved for Posterity
In his 20 years of drumming, Branch estimates that he has learned some 500 songs. (He says it’s not uncommon for singers to learn thousands over a lifetime.) He feels a responsibility to share what he’s learned in part because he and the others who’ve made up the medical school’s core group of drummers are now moving on to residencies and jobs.
To aid the next generation, he’s having the current group record their songs at a studio in Duluth. He’s also phonetically writing down the words of the songs and what they mean. In addition, he’s trying to get down on paper what he knows about how and when each song can be used and how the drum should be cared for.
Branch also has introduced his sons, ages 3 and 5, to the drum. Each has sat on his lap and sung with him. “I’m not going to force my sons to be singers,” he says, but he admits he’d love for them to learn the songs and continue the tradition. “Now, they still think it’s neat, and they frequently sing on their hand drums,” he says.
Branch sees himself as a link in a chain of singers and drummers stretching back thousands of years. And he wants to ensure that it doesn’t break. “I don’t want to go to the end of my days hanging on to these songs,” he says. “I want to pass them down so that our traditions will continue to survive.”—Carmen Peota