Grandfather Little Hawk, Elder-Storyteller
| BEING CONNECTED WITH NATURE "When we track, we pick up a string. At the far end of that string a being is moving, existing, still connected to the track that we gaze upon. The animal's movement is still contained in that track, along with the smallest of external and internal details. As we follow these tracks, we begin to become the very animal we track. Our awareness expands from the animal we have become to the landscape it reacted to and is played by. We feel the influence of all things that surround us and our awareness expands from our consciousness to the mind of the animal and finally to the very cosmos. In tracking and awareness, then, there can never be a separation. One without the other is but half a story, and incomplete picture, thus an incomplete understanding. It is the track that connects us to that grand consciousness and expands us to limitless horizons." -- The Science and Art of Tracking |
OUR PROGRAMS
Grandfather Little Hawk, the Native American Elder-Storyteller of our organization, teaches that we as human beings should measure the consequences our actions will have to the seventh generation. We have always designed programs with this measure in mind.
Click here for info about the 2007 NJ Walkabout.
Read about "How We Started: the 88-Acre Project."
CAMP PROGRAMS
Our camp program is a low-cost summer program which introduce children to free, unstructured play in the woods under adult supervision. Children have so much structure in school, that summer vacation needs to be a time to get outdoors with nature. Children are free to explore in the great playground of the forest. The impact on the seventh generation is that with happy childhood memories and stories of glorious summers, as adults, these campers will associate the forest with freedom and fun, and strive to preserve existing forests and plant new ones for their own children. If forest games become a source of entertainment, then money will be spent in creating new forests. Some of our campers have taken a further step and have pursued the serious study of Primitive Survival through programs such as Coyote Tracks and Tom Brown Survival School. We raise money to send underprivileged children to these schools, and then we hire the graduates as instructors for our programs.
STORYTELLING WORKSHOPS
The storytelling workshops feature Grandfather Little Hawk
and introduce children to the art of the oral tradition of storytelling. Emphasis is placed on stories with morals, and the most effective techniques for delivering those stories, including voice projection, modulation, and engaging the whole audience through movement, music and participation. Seven generations from now, we will have created a new storytelling culture based upon these principles, and the message of respect for the earth and all its creatures, which is at the center of Littlehawk's stories, will have reached the hearts of people throughout the world.
Our women's program is a new approach to counseling, meditation and self-help, which utilizes the woods as a source of inspiration. Counseling sessions are more likely to involve a canoe than a couch, and meditation takes place around a campfire. While this program was originally designed for women, we have expanded to include all adults. Our sessions also include prayers and ceremonies from many different religious backgrounds, emphasizing the common threads that tie all belief together. Seven generations from now, the great-great grandchildren of our participants will be successful, confident individuals, raised in a loving environment where obstacles will be viewed as challenges, differences will be tolerated and embraced, and the forest will be seen as a source of inspiration and healing. We will have raised a generation of heroes.
MANHUNT GAMES
Our Manhunt games, which run from October through January, are a form of sport at which no age advantage exists. Parents and children can both play with equal hope of success. In this way, we can have a competition where the whole family can participate, and enjoy the wilderness. In seven generations, people will create Manhunt courses, the way they now create golf courses, with trees planted specifically for hiding. Teams from throughout the country will compete. Already, we have had Boy Scout Troops from as far away as Binghampton, NY visit our woods in New Jersey to compete in a Manhunt game.
GATHERER DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
The Gatherer Development Corportation is the ultimate project of our Institute. Through sponsorship of promising projects such as subterranean domes, fibre-optics and the humidity remediation, we hope that the housing developments of the future can be sun-filled, dry structures underneath the forest, and that the engine of the economy would favor the construction of this type of housing development. Seven generations from now, cities may be vast forests with human caretakers living beneath them.
©2007 The Gatherer Institute. All Rights Reserved.