“I don't believe I am on that stage to prove what I can do. I am there to share what has been given to me.” Rona Yellow Robe
I first met Rona Yellow Robe in 2023 at Solstice Flute Camp in Prescott, Arizona where she was a staff musician teaching beginning students. A year earlier I had bought a Native American style flute to play during my own musical performances in honor of the Choctaw/Irish connection (the Choctaws raised money to help relieve the Irish during the 1847 Potato Famine). While I could play the notes on this flute, I couldn’t play the music. Rona was my first teacher on how to play this music. We have been friends ever since.
Rona is a singer/songwriter and the 2014 & 2016 Native American Music Flutist of the Year. She is also the recipient of numerous other prestigious music awards. Rona is enrolled in the Chippewa Cree Tribe of Rocky Bay, Montana.
I caught up with Rona this past August during my fourth stint at Solstice. She graciously agreed to share her thoughts about the healing power of the Native American flute.
How has the NA flute helped to connect you with Nature? How do you converse with the NA flute? Or how has the music helped you?
I have had many beautiful experiences with Nature through playing my flutes. I’ve watched horses, birds, and dogs, and other creatures stop and give their full attention to the songs of my flutes. I’ve even experienced the wind responding to my flute in what felt like a sacred call and response.
In those moments, the human part of me feels I'm being heard by the Great Spirit, and I am reminded that I am not simply playing to Nature - I am playing with Nature.
The Native American flute has helped me connect with Nature by teaching me to slow down and listen. When I sit with my flute, I don’t feel like I am simply playing an instrument - I feel like I am entering into a conversation with Creation.
Sometimes I will take my flute outside and let the wind, the birds, the trees, the water, and the sounds around me become part of the music. I don’t always know what I am going to play. I listen first, and then I allow the flute to answer.
For me, my flute song is a prayer. There are times when words aren't enough, and the flute gives my heart a voice. I have played when I was joyful, when I was grieving, when I needed healing, and when I simply wanted to give thanks. In those moments, I feel connected to something much greater than myself.
The flute has also deepened my relationship with the Four Directions, Mother Earth, and Sky Nation. Each breath I put into the flute reminds me that I am part of Nature - not separate from it. My Breath, my Spirit becomes song and the song becomes a prayer.
I believe the flute has taught me that conversation doesn't always require words. Sometimes we speak through breath, through silence, through vibration, and through our willingness to listen.
I love my quiet reflective moments when I play, and I am not trying to control the music. I find myself listening to what wants to come through me. And sometimes, the greatest gift is simply being quiet enough to hear the answer.
How do you use this gift for others? What is the relationship between you and the flute?
When I first heard the Native American flute - really heard it - it was like world stopped.
I had heard the Native American flute but never touched one; yet Creator placed the desire to play one in my heart. In that moment, I knew I wanted to learn, not simply so I could make music, but so I could help others feel what I had felt: that sense of being completely present, connected, and moved by something beyond words.
My relationship with the Native American flute is deeply intimate. The flute has become a companion, a teacher, and a voice for the things my heart sometimes cannot speak. I don't feel that I simply play the flute. There are many times when I feel as though the flute plays for me - expressing the grief, joy, gratitude, healing, and love that live inside me.
The flute helped me find my way. It helped me integrate my singing voice, my love of storytelling - a talent I received from my father, Joe Yellow Robe - and discover parts of myself I didn't know were there. In many ways, the flute has been a channel from Creator, introducing me to my gifts, my weaknesses, my strengths, and ultimately to myself - to who I am and who I want to become.
And this gift was never meant to be kept for myself. Whether I am playing for others or teaching my brothers and sisters to discover the songs within their own hearts through the flute, I feel most fulfilled when I am sharing what Creator has given me.
That is why I love being a flute teacher. There is something deeply beautiful about watching someone find their own voice, their own song, and their own connection through the flute. To me, teaching is not just about learning to play an instrument - it is about helping someone discover what has been waiting inside them all along.
I have had the privilege of sharing the flute in my recovery circle, through sound healing with crystal singing bowls and flute, and through twenty years of volunteering with hospice. I have played for veterans, schools, weddings, memorials, and served our local Tribes with my flutes. Wherever I am invited to share it, I try to remember that I am not simply bringing music. I am bringing a prayer, a breath, a story, and a space where someone might feel connected or held.
The flute has taught me that music can reach places words cannot. Sometimes a person doesn't need an explanation. They simply need to hear something that touches their spirit.
For me, the Native American flute is not just an instrument.
It is a relationship.
It is a way of listening, a way of praying, a way of healing, and a way of serving.
And perhaps most beautifully, it has been one of the ways Creator has helped me discover who I am.
You have performed for thousands of audiences. What do you bring to those performances that you hope to transfer to your listeners?
When I perform, I don't simply want people to hear my music. I want them to feel something.
I bring my whole heart to the stage; the joy, the grief, the stories, the laughter, the healing, and the lessons life has given me. I bring the understanding that music can be a bridge between people, between cultures, and between the places within ourselves that sometimes feel difficult to reach.
I hope my listeners experience a moment when the world becomes quiet and they can simply breathe. Maybe they remember someone they love. Maybe they reconnect with a part of themselves they had forgotten. Maybe they find comfort, joy, or even permission to feel something they have been carrying.
Through my flute, my voice, and my stories, I hope to transfer a sense of connection to Creator, to Mother Earth, to one another, and to the sacredness of our own lives.
I don't believe I am on that stage to prove what I can do. I am there to share what has been given to me.
If someone leaves my performance feeling a little more hopeful, a little more connected, or a little more open-hearted than when they arrived, then I have done what I came there to do.
I want people to leave knowing that they are not alone, that their stories matter, and that there is still beauty, healing, and love available to them.
That is what I hope to transfer.
Not simply music, but a feeling of being connected, seen, and reminded of the beauty of being alive.
🐛Rona Yellow Robe🦋
For more information on Rona, check out her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CreeNatively
