Native American Flutist · Published 6 October 2026
Why Western Red Cedar built the Native American flute — the tree, its Indigenous significance, and what cedar does for the sound.
Most Native American flutes are made from cedar — specifically Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata). This is not a casual choice. It is a centuries-old choice rooted in what the tree itself has meant to the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, and a much older choice rooted in what the wood physically does to sound. This is the story of cedar — the tree, the material, and the voice it gives the flute.
Western Red Cedar grows along the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest of North America — from southern Alaska through British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, down into northern California. The species can live over a thousand years. Old-growth specimens have been recorded at heights exceeding sixty meters. The wood is soft, light, straight-grained, and naturally rot-resistant due to oils called thujaplicins that make the heartwood unappealing to insects and fungi. This combination — straight grain, low density, natural durability — is what makes cedar useful for boats, totem poles, longhouses, and woodwind instruments.
It is also, importantly, the wood that the Indigenous nations of the Pacific Northwest — the Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw, and others — have honored for thousands of years. Western Red Cedar is sometimes called "the Tree of Life" among these nations. From it came canoes that crossed open ocean, lodges that sheltered generations, baskets, clothing, ceremonial regalia, totem poles, and musical instruments. The relationship between these peoples and this tree is one of the most documented examples of long-term sustainable use of a single species in human history.
The Native American flute, in its two-chambered form, is not historically a Pacific Northwest instrument — its strongest traditional associations are with the Plains and Woodland nations farther east. But the modern flute revival happened in part because Western Red Cedar was abundantly available to makers, and the cedar's tonal properties turned out to be ideally suited to the instrument. The result is that an instrument with cultural roots in one part of North America is most often built from a wood with cultural significance in another part. The flute that most people think of as "the classic Native American flute sound" is, sonically, a Pacific Northwest tree singing a Plains tradition's songs.
For more on the actual craftsmanship of turning cedar into a flute, see How a Native American Flute Is Made.
Cedar is acoustically absorbent. Its density is low (around 320 kg/m³ — by comparison, walnut is around 640, oak is around 700) and its cellular structure dampens high-frequency vibrations slightly. The result, for a flute, is a tone that is warm, rounded, full of low and mid-range overtones, and slightly less sharp in the upper register than a flute made from a harder wood. This is the "warm Native American flute sound" that most listeners associate with the instrument.
Cedar also resists moisture-driven cracking better than many other woods, thanks to those natural thujaplicins. This matters because the inside of a flute is constantly exposed to the moisture of the player's breath. A wood that absorbs moisture poorly cracks. Cedar handles it. For more on the wood-choice options and what each species offers tonally, see What Wood Should Your First Flute Be?
Western Red Cedar is, on the whole, plentiful — but its old-growth populations are not. The thousand-year-old trees that produce the finest-grained, most stable wood for flute making are the same trees that environmentalist groups and Indigenous nations have spent decades trying to protect from clear-cutting. Most reputable flute makers source their cedar from sustainably managed stands, from reclaimed wood, or from suppliers who maintain certified chain-of-custody documentation. The smaller and more artisanal the maker, the more likely they can answer specific questions about where their cedar comes from. Asking the question is itself a form of care.
I have flutes made of walnut and cherry and a few of exotic woods. The flutes I reach for most are cedar. It is partly habit; it is partly the warm tone; it is partly the way cedar smells when you open the case — that gentle resinous note that lingers after years of playing. It is also, increasingly, the awareness that the tree this flute came from is not abstract. It grew somewhere; it was cut; it was dried for years; it became the body in my hands. The instrument is a relationship with the tree, not just with the maker. Cedar is one of the things I think about quietly while playing.
For more on the broader picture of this instrument, see The Complete Guide to the Native American Flute. For my upcoming Native American Heritage Month piece, see the journal index next week.