Nivkh Shaman's Drum
Oval frame drum of the Nivkh people of Sakhalin and the Amur region, with a wooden handle, used by the shaman to accompany spirit journeys and healing rituals. Its sound marks the shaman's passage between the worlds, as recorded by ethnographers including Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney in her study of Nivkh shamanism. The drum is made with a bent wooden rim and a hide head, tightened while wet and dried over the frame, with a carved handle or cross-bar on the underside. It is beaten with a soft mallet, and the shaman uses both the strokes and the pauses to summon and question the spirits. In the bear fe