This study of the musical instruments of native people in Northeastern North America focuses on interpretations by elders and consultants from Iroquois, Wabanati, Innuat and Anishnabek communities. Beverley Diamond, M. Sam Cronk and Franziska von Rosen present these instruments in a theoretically innovative setting organized around such abstract themes as complementarity, twinness and relationship. As sources of metaphor - in both sound and image - instruments are interpreted within a framework that regards meaning as "emergent" and that challenges a number of previous ethnographic descriptions. Finally, the association between sound and "motion" - an association that illuminates the unity of music and dance and the life-cycles of individual musical instruments - is explored. Featuring photographs of instruments, dialogues among the co-authors, numerous interviews with individual music-makers, and an appended catalogue of over 700 instrument descriptions, this book should prove of interest to all ethnomusicologists and students of Native American culture, as well as general readers interested in Native American mythology and religious life.