Ceremonial drums have been targeted for destruction more consistently than almost any other class of religious object, and the reason is practical rather than symbolic: a great many ceremonies cannot proceed without one, so taking the drum stops the ceremony.
The clearest case is the Sami runebomme, or gievrie. During the Dano-Norwegian and Swedish missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the drums were confiscated and burned in organised campaigns, and their owners were prosecuted; at least one noaidi, Anders Poulsen, was tried in Vadso in 1692, his drum entered in evidence against him. Of the drums that once existed, roughly seventy survive worldwide, and most of them are in museums outside Sapmi, taken as evidence of a crime, kept as curiosities, and now held as collections.
Their return is an active question rather than a historical one. The Freavnantjahke gievrie, held in Germany at the Meininger Museen, was agreed for return to the Saemien Sijte museum in Norway in 2023 after a long campaign, and it is the case usually cited when the wider repatriation argument is made.
The same pattern recurs elsewhere with less documentation: drums seized in mission campaigns in Siberia, in North America under the policies that suppressed ceremony into the twentieth century, and in colonial administrations across Africa. Where a drum has been kept, it has often been kept hidden, and where a ceremony has been revived, sourcing a drum has frequently been the first practical problem.