Drum Making

Upcoming Ceremony: 10.10.2026

Welcome to Berlin Dewe’iganike

In this full-day drum making workshop called Berlin Dewe’iganike (‘Berlin makes a drum’ in Anishinaabe language) led by Holden Madagame and co-facilitated by Sarah Martinus, around 8 participants will come together to build drums, share songs and stories while creating an important element of many cultures’ spiritualities. This is intended to strengthen the spiritual and ancestral community that exists in Berlin through practices rooted in indigenous knowledge and traditions. 

Through the shared challenge of creating this sacred object (which has its own spirit), you will learn about yourself, the connection to your own culture and ancestry, your community, and how to express yourself through your drum. 

The hand drum for the Anishinaabe people is central to our spirituality and our way of expressing the heartbeat of Mother Earth, as well as using our individual voices to guide us through trying times. The story goes, that a little Anishinaabe girl asked the Creator for instructions on how to end a bloody war, and was given instructions on how to create a hand drum. By playing it, the Anishinaabe brought peace and harmony, reminding everyone to celebrate their lives and the connection to Mother Earth.  In Anishinaabe culture, making a hand drum yourself is very important. You can buy a drum, but the meaning and spirit that is imbued into the drum you make yourself has no comparison. The drum itself has a spirit and must be treated like another member of your family. 

Everyone can benefit from the medicine birthing their own drum brings.

Why do this? – A personal text from Holden

It’s important to me to help people make drums, since this has been a crucial aspect of my own healing journey. Creating my own drum was a pivotal moment in my own spiritual and ancestral healing, but I wish I could have done this in community with the support of others.

The resources that I had were mostly books and online articles, videos, and occasionally someone kind enough to read an email and point me in the right direction. I’m grateful for these resources, but making drums should be done in community, and not in isolation. Even the community of one other person who can witness and support you is important.

By birthing these drums together, we are practicing relation. We are practicing coming together and out of isolation, practicing asking for help, practicing getting through challenges together. We are also deepening our relationship to our ancestors and other spirits.

Like the little Anishinaabe girl from the legends, I want us to remember this essential tool, which has stopped wars. If we all had a drum, if everyone in the world had a drum, if we all played at the same time together with the heartbeat of the earth and the non-humans around us, what would happen? Would we finally have peace? Would we finally remember why we are here?

My drum is a companion which has supported me unconditionally, just as my ancestors do. It supports me in grief, in rage, in joy, in protest. It helps me speak to others when I have no words. It helps my body speak to my mind. I want you to have this companion, I want you to remember that you aren’t alone.

In Anishinaabe culture, making a hand drum yourself is very important, some consider it taboo to buy a drum. Although buying a drum from a loving drum maker is a beautiful experience, it robs you of the journey. I want to give you this journey. The meaning and spirit that is imbued into the drum you make yourself has no comparison. The drum itself has a spirit and must be treated like another member of your family. In an attempt to do things in a good way, in the best way I know how, I want to help you make your own drum.

Your drum will not be ‘perfect’ in the sense that there will be things you felt you did ‘wrong’. In my culture, imperfections are required. In even the most intricate beadwork, there must be an imperfection built in to remind us that we are not perfect, and that we cannot pretend to be.

Miigwech,
Holden Madagame

Practical Information

Date: October 10th, 2026 (10.10.2026)
Time: 13:00-20:00+

Schedule

1. Arrival: 13.00-13:30
   1. On the day please feel welcome to come in at 13:00 and take some time to settle into the space before we begin. There is an outside area with plants and seating. 
2. Ceremony: 13:30-20:00 (with breaks)
3. +Wind down, downtime, and snacks

Please note that at 13:30 we will be closing the door and turning off the buzzer. If you are running late yet still coming, make sure you inform us in advance.

The day will look roughly like this:

1. Open the space and introduce ourselves
2. Share stories and reflect on questions
3. Go on a drumming journey
4. Find our intentions and pray
5. Choose our materials (frames and hides)
6. Make our drums together
7. Go on another drumming journey
8. Share our experiences and close

Location

Holographic Healing Nest
Eisenbahnstrasse 11, 10997 Berlin

Pricing

We use a sliding scale model for Berlin Dewe’iganike. This is our attempt at allowing people from different backgrounds to participate while still getting our material costs and time paid fairly. We encourage you to look at this Solidarity Pricing page to assess your own situation.

If you are white, German mother tongue speaking, and/or able-bodied, employed with a socially secure job, please seriously consider investing in full-price (288 – 333) participation, as there is inherent privilege, stability, and safety guaranteed to you and your body that non-white, migrant, disabled bodies do not benefit from.

Price Categories

How can I book?

To book a spot, please fill out the registration form at the bottom of the page and send your full payment. Only until your payment is received will your spot be fully reserved.

Sliding scale pricing has been organized through the use of coupons at the point of sale. Please see the ‘Pricing’ section for specific details.

Participants are invited to share intentions on the booking form. These shares will be kept 100% confidential and not spoken about within the group ceremony, unless you decide to share them yourself.

If you have questions for booking or the form is not working for you, reach out to holden.madagame@gmail.com.

How do I pay?

Reservation is payable via Stripe or Paypal. If you’d like to pay via Bank Transfer we can send you an invoice.

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations after we order the hides & under 1-2 weeks ahead of our scheduled time in many cases need to be billed for group drum ceremonies due to material costs.

We will try to keep a waiting list to be able to give you money back in the situation where someone else can take your spot.

Preparation

The day of the workshop, it’s important to bring supportive energy for yourself and for others & be ‘as rested as possible’ in relation to current capacity. For each of us that looks different, you will not be judged if you show up exhausted, enraged, or grieving. Emotionally: Come as you are. All of you is welcome here.

Prep-Detox & Rest

The days before the workshop, be mindful of what substances you consume. Come sober to the workshop itself (no micro-dosing please). We advise not to drink alcohol, consume excessively processed sugars/caffeine (energy drinks), psychoactive or chemical substances for at least 24 – 48 hours prior. It is a good idea to plan to get enough sleep.

Intentions

Take some time in the week(s) prior to reflect on why you are making a drum and to envision your drum into being. We ask this question in the registration form, but please continue to think about this. Having clear intentions and supportive energy to put into the drums will shape our drums’ power and medicine. It is important to start vibrantly!

Psychic Health & Stability

This session is for psychically stable folks. If you feel you are not psychically in a stable place, please let us know in advance. While we will do our best to adapt the practices to be healthy & stabilizing for the folks who are coming, group work is not safe for folks who are dealing with psychosis. We are each responsible for ourselves, to ground our own energy & communicate current capacities.

What do I bring?

• Notebook, pen
• Blindfold/scarf or Keffiyeh to cover your eyes 
• Wear comfortable & warm clothing, with fresh socks – we will be shoes off.
• If you like, a blanket to sit on, or cover yourself with.
  • There will be yoga mats and cushions at the space
• Some snacks (to share, if you like) & bottle of water
  • Some snacks will be provided too
• Power objects, medicine bag
  • Maybe you have your own drum, your own rattles, your own crystals, that assist you building your own power or calling ancestors. Please feel invited to bring them.

What Are We Doing & How

This ceremony is about creating a drum, an ancient tool of generative resonance. These ancient tools are closely interwoven with the building blocks of our shared consciousness, the formation and viewpoints from which we understand all systems we live within.

In this ceremony we offer participants to have their own direct experience with sound-led altered-state practices. When the drum beat is sustained, an innate ability, termed ‘shamanic state of consciousness’, promotes powerful journeying and healing. This trance-state is beneficial for the body. It grounds our energy, lowers anxiety, and brings relief from emotional, psychic and physical pain.

We will locate a starting place by ‘mapping’ into our own cosmologies, accessing a channel in order to go about seeking ancestral guidance, especially in relation to our new drums.

The drum is an incredible tool of somatic regulation, especially for neurodivergent folks whose energy often moves upwards and into the crown & third eye chakras. Drumming helps us to pull this energy down and ground us again.

We begin our existences echo-locating within heartbeat of the womb’s waters. The drum beat, in reminding us of our watery beginnings, brings us back into resonant relation with the heartbeat of Mother Earth and great cycles of Grandmother Cosmos.

The drum is a divinatory tool, a journeying tool. In practice, the drum is a device which enables us to mediate between worlds. 

Imbued with the Spirit of the Animal whose hide we use and whose life has been given for the drum, the drum brings the instincts, traits and talents of the animal. Our drums are characters who have the potential to become teachers and companions for us on our spiritual path.

Direct experience offers each journeyer agency and direct contact with spiritual guidance. The reason we include journeys in the drum ceremony is to open up each participant’s access to their own direct ancestral experience.

The journey we are taking you on is not complicated, it’s simple, but it’s very challenging. You could choose to buy a drum, but you are choosing to come on this journey to conceive and birth a drum together in community.

The way we will do this is through ceremony, inviting and acknowledging our ancestors and spirits, inviting and acknowledging ourselves, looking into ourselves to find why we are here making drums together.

The materials that we will use are wooden frames and animal hides. The wooden frames are personally made by Holden, and the hides are sourced in Germany from farms and breeders. We choose to use animal hides instead of vegan materials, because it is important to connect to the spirit of the animal, and most vegan drum heads are made from plastic or mylar, which is also made of polyester. In the end, we believe using an animal hide is more sustainable and spiritually connective.

Who is this for?

This workshop is for anyone interested in exploring their spirituality through the journey of birthing a drum. For those who are seeking your own tools, this is for you.

A drum is a companion for spiritual exploration and ancestral connection, and made in ceremony, we also charge the drum with ancestral power.

This ceremony is a practical container, held in sacred space in order to open a doorway to and invite ancestral wisdom in. We do this through discussing ritual frameworks, taking two altered-state journeys with theReady to book your spot? guidance of drumming and fostering a collaborative initiatory space as we make our drums.

Whether you already have a spiritual practice or not, please feel warmly welcomed to this space. We are all eternally learning and can learn from each other.

Intersectionality of the Praxis

This ceremony will be offering an intersectional, queer feminist, de-conditioning, de-colonialising psychic framework, informed by multiple, overlapping kinship-based worldviews and esoteric spiritualities.

We enter this space self-aware of our own position and privileges – that means understanding that some of us are here to witness, support & listen to others, especially anyone who has dislocated or lost ancestral roots of diaspora; those who consider themselves BIPoC or a Body of Culture, and those in fluid spaces with identity/gender expressions. The ceremony space is also centralising of FLINTA bodies.

With our intersectionality praxis we know there is no such thing as perfection, only curiosity and humility!

Through the ceremony we are also able to have open discussions, so if you are unclear about how to go about deconditioning or lineage work, feel free to ask us about it.

Who Are We?

Holden Madagame

Holden Madagame (pronounced ma-DA-ga-mii) is a proud Odawa (Anishinaabe) indigenous, queer, trans artist and research-based performer originally from Michigan, USA, now residing in Berlin. His work weaves together ancestral healing, artistic expression, and community empowerment, drawing from his heritage and contemporary experiences.

Rooted in the traditions of Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Medicine and guided by mentors Shannon Willis and Annie Blackstone, Holden offers ancestral lineage healing that honors Indigenous knowledge and spiritual practices. Alongside Anna Hoffmann, he has co-facilitated ancestral healing circles in Berlin.

Central to Holden’s practice is the transformative power of drumming, which is inherently connected with ancestral healing and spirituality. He leads “Rage Sessions,” somatic workshops designed to help people express anger communally through body and voice, using this energy as a path toward liberation and healing. His artistic research at Hogfish Maine and Uferstudios Berlin explores these themes, investigating how ancestral expression manifests through embodied voice, movement, and drumming.

In summer 2025, Holden organized a BIPOC-only drum-making workshop at Uferstudios Berlin, funded entirely by donations to ensure it was free for participants. Six individuals came together to build drums from boar hide, fostering community and cultural exploration.

Holden also contributes to “the village – a grief ritual” in Berlin, where he co-facilitates and is a core member of the musical ensemble which supports these rituals.

Sarah Martinus

Sārāh Martinus (she/they) is a research-informed artist & ancestral lineage healer focused towards spiritual abolition. She calls this ‘rejuvenation activism’, and spends her time visioning in re-member-ship of relational kinship practices, as life-giving and post-utopic, reclaiming templates of collective gaze. She has had a private praxis open in Berlin since 2020, which focuses on intersectional shadow integration.

Having studied many spirituality systems, including Core Shamanic practices through an Archetypal Lens, over 6 – 7 years with the Foundation of Shamanic Studies Europe, Sārāh’s analytic style of psychospirituality centralises the pedagogy of elemental earth, and opens communication in mediating the systemic.

Sārāh fosters a long-term engagement with postcolonial theory, anti-racist discourse, decolonial practice and queer/intersectional frameworks. 

As descendant of both a migrating Sri Lankan diaspora and Irish settling colonies, Sārāh came into being on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri People of Woiwurrung language group, in Kulin Nation; who are the traditional custodians of Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.

Sārāh is an Australian passport holder, with permanent residence in the EU (2023), a queer, (re)claiming BIPoC, sometimes-white-passing, cis-female body. She acknowledges crip-kinship: differently-abled bodies as peers and as teachers.

Credits

• Holden Madagame: Project Lead, Concept, Materials, Build Research, Workshop design, Website design
• Sarah Martinus: Supportive Infastructures, Text copy, Spiritual Ethic/Ethos and Ceremonial Support

Registration