Tony Grondin displays two of his creations, a bustle of 24 eagle feathers and a “porky roach” headdress made with porcupine hair, deer hair, yarn, and eagle feathers. Having been interested in Aanishinaabe culture since he was a young man, Tony Grondin is now mastering American Indian crafts. He passes his skills to others and instills respect into each creation, a long-standing Indian custom, he says.

A St. Ignace resident and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Mr. Grondin has for five years been crafting Native objects like drums (called diiwagins ), medicine sticks, flutes, feather holders, dream catchers, and powwow regalia. He has adopted the Indian name Beeboonnini, meaning Winter Man in the Ojibwa language, and held a drum-making workshop for a small group of tribal members at the Marquette Mission Site and Museum of Ojibwa Culture in St. Ignace August 19. There, he taught students that they should respect what they make, since most of it is from a living thing.

Tony Grondin of St. Ignace shows students how to tighten laces on an Indian drum made of cedar and deer hide. Mr. Grondin held a drum making workshop at the Museum of Ojibwa Culture Friday, August 19. “The diiwagin is like your grandfather,” he explained. “You have to treat it like it is. The head side must be up at all times and, if set on the ground, it should be placed on a towel or blanket.”

Mr. Grondin suggests those displaying a diiwagin should, at times, pick it up and play it or “smudge” it with ceremonial smoke. Smudging involves whisking the smoke from a ceremonial fire onto the drum. To Native Americans, he said, this cleanses the new creation as it enters the world.

“You wouldn’t put your grandfather on a shelf for display and just leave him, would you?” he asked? “ Native Americans give respect to everything they use, even giving names to them. In a tipi, there are 13 poles, for example. Each pole is given a name. That’s how respectful Native Americans are to the living resources they use.”

The drum, he said, according to a story told through the generations, was created when an Indian woman was hiding near a pond for three days, waiting out a skirmish that erupted in her village. During her wait, she was approached by a spirit that taught her the creation and use of the drum. She returned to her village and began teaching it to others.

Today, as in the past, drums are used in Native cultures for prayer, mourning, and celebrations as a way of sending a message to the Creator, said Mr. Grondin.

“In some Native American cultures,” he said, “women are not allowed to play or create powwow drums, given that they can give birth. The making of the drum is a man’s way of bringing life to the world, since all of it is made from natural parts, such as trees and deer.”

Mr. Grondin, a hunter and trapper, makes diiwagins using deer hide and cedar. He removes the hair from the hide with a series of soaking and rinsing steps and cuts sections that will fit over a cedar frame. One hide can make three drum heads, Mr. Grondin said.

Lacing is made with the hide that is left over and limbs from the cedar tree are shaved to make the drum sticks. What Mr. Grondin does not use he puts in the ceremonial fire to give back to the Creator.

As a formality, he lights a fire before creating the drum to ask the spirit to bring goodness and positive thoughts into the work of the drum makers. He offers to the spirit sacred herbs like cedar, tobacco, sage, or sweetgrass.

Mr. Grondin learned his craft from Henry “Tiq” Bush, a Pottawatami in Sault Ste. Marie.

“He’s been my biggest inspiration in drum making and the culture and teachings of all the Native American things I do,” Mr. Grondin said.

Mr. Grondin’s family heritage in the Straits area dates to 1634, when a Grondin descendant was said to have accompanied French missionary Jean Nicolet to Michilimackinac.

His great-grandfather, Peter D. Grondin, discovered what has been said to be the remains of Father Marquette in 1878 while clearing property for Patrick Murray at the present-day Marquette Mission Site in St. Ignace.

Mr. Grondin also said a family member traveled with historic adventurer and French coureur-de-bois Nicolas Pierre in 1670, when he gathered Indians for the famous Sault Ste. Marie meeting with St. Lusson in declaring that area and all of North America west of Montreal as sovereign from the British.

Mr. Grondin became interested in his Indian heritage at the age of 17 and has followed and participated in many powwows throughout the state since then. He grew up listening to his father, Elliott, who was half Indian, speak Aanishinabowiin whenever he was around Aanishinaabe people.

“He never spoke it in the house,” Mr. Grondin said. “He would always say ‘Boozhoo niijii’ when he met with his friends. I never knew what that meant until we went to a softball game and a guy who knew the language said it means ‘greetings, my friend.’”