Sundance Flutes

Sundance Native American style flutes

The design for the Sundance Native American style flutes was created by my flute mentor Clint Carlyle. Clint’s wife, Mary, was part Lakota Sioux. Every year Clint would make flutes to take to the Sundance ceremony at the Sioux Nation reservation in North Dakota. He would gift these flutes to the People attended the ceremony.

At the conclusion of the Sundance ceremony pieces of the Sundance tree would be given to the dancers and to the people who helped support the ceremony.

Clint wanted to make Mary a flute from the piece of Sundance wood they had been given. However the piece of wood was not large enough to make a flute. So Clint glued the Sundance wood to a piece of walnut he had in his shop. From these combined woods he made the first Sundance flute. 

We make two different types of Sundance flutes – one made of purpleheart and curly maple and one made of walnut (or some other dark wood) and curly maple.

If you are not familiar with the Sundance ceremony do a chatGPT search - very interesting.