Residential School, the St. Mary's brass band, and the band members who played the drum and marched to its beat. Unlike the other stored instruments, the numinous drum demanded that I ask questions of it. I immediately wanted to uncover its life story, knowing that in doing so, I would discover the hidden lives of the snare drums, single valve bugles, bass bugles, trumpets, and symbols that survived St. Mary's. What I did not realize was that while studying the life of this bass drum, I had discovered the catalyst that complicated the residential school experience for so many of the school's survivors. In my search for the drum's history, I met seven of the women who, in various stages of the drum's past, gave the brass band life. Their bittersweet stories fleshed out the drum's history. However, their narratives also revealed the complexity of the residential school experience. Thus, through its association with a residential school, this numinous object complexifies Stó:l history.1 The purpose of this study is to develop an ethnohistory of the St. Mary's Residential School bass drum. By discovering the biographical details of the bass drum's life, the true historical and cultural importance of this artifact to the Stó:l people is clear; it offers another, more complex, dimension to the residential school experience that may not have otherwise been acknowledged. Thus, in this work it will be made evident through the stories of the St. Mary's survivors and the numinousity of the drum that the St. Mary's bass drum complicates the residential school experience. Contrary to the residential school historiography that portrays the students' experiences in an entirely negative light, the women interviewed for this project stated that, because of the band, their memories of St. Mary's are both positive and negative, often making it difficult to reconcile their feelings of the past. Finally, because of the drum's significance to the Stó:l people, this study will also argue the fact that the numinous drum

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