"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 seperation. 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

 



Grandfather Little Hawk, Elder-Storyteller






















































































































OUR PROGRAMS

Grandfather Littlehawk, 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.

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 of re-wilding. 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 Littlehawk 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.





WOMEN'S PROGRAM

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 Binghamton, 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.





HOW WE STARTED: THE 88-ACRE PROJECT

The 88-Acre Project was the first project of the Gatherer Institute. We created an environment in which activities, both educational and recreational, teach self-reliance, foster a sense of tribal unity in the community at large, and foster a love of life through love of nature.

The Target Community: The community of South Toms River is unique in Ocean County, and perhaps in all of New Jersey. It is a blue-collar community which is completely integrated racially. It is a young community, with the second lowest average age in the county, and among the poorest. One of the most economically disadvantaged neighborhood in South Toms River is the development known as Center Homes. Abutting this neighborhood's southern border is an undeveloped tract of Pine Barrens forest and Cedar Swamp Wetlands known as The 88 Acres.



In the past, these 88 Acres were used for drug trafficking, illegal dumping, arson and gang related activities. The acreage was slated for development until the Gatherer Institute proposed using the area as a Wilderness Classroom and Playground for the people of Center Homes and for the community at large. The town agreed.

The acreage sits on the border between the borough of South Toms River and Beachwood, and residents on the Beachwood border have access to the south side of the creek, although the entire parcel belongs to South Toms River. While the racial and economic make-up of Beachwood is very different than that of South Toms River (the neighborhood on the south side of the 88 acres is much more affluent). Signs of beer parties, illegal dumping, drug abuse and vandalism are evident here as well.

History of the Program: In May, 2001, The Gatherer Institute was founded. Its immediate purpose was to provide principle-based educational environments for the people of the region. It proposed to offer Primitive Survival Skills Courses for the children and teens of the region, and through these courses to foster a caretaker attitude toward the earth, while challenging students to face fear. The Institute found a head instructor at the world-reknown Tracker School, a primitive survival school close by. At the school, caretakers live year-round off the land. Many of these caretakers have experience with survival programs for inner-city youth, and the individual that the Institute hired to run its course successfully steered inexperienced children through the rigorous course.

The South Toms River Alliance, the local branch of the statewide Alliances for Drug, Tobacco and Alcohol Prevention, offered a scholarship to offset the cost of the instructor. The program cost $35 for South Toms River Residents, and $70 for non-residents, but no students were turned away for inability to pay, and 30% of the students met income requirements for scholarships.

The program proved so successful that the Municipality took notice and allowed the Institute to continue to run programs indefinitely, and it postponed plans for developing the land. The demand for a second program arose.

In the meantime, Harbor House, a local counseling organization was reporting a drop in the number of women and teens who were utilizing its programs. It was proposed that the Institute keep the campfires burning for the rest of the summer and volunteer MSWs and therapists were found to staff the campfire and provide counseling for any who wished it.

As the program developed, many believed that it would be better to train women to help themselves and their families. A life-skills coaching program was developed, headed by a staff of volunteers from New York City who came down each Wednesday to run programs by the campfire. A primitive longhouse was built to enclose the campfire, utilizing only native materials.

At this point, the focus of the programs began to change as women brought their needs to the group. Most women felt the need to find activities which would allow them to bond with their families, but most recreational activities were prohibitively expensive. Inspired by the lessons of the Life Coaching Program, they came up with their own proposal: A weekly free book reading in the longhouse with a marshmallow roast.

The Tuesday night book readings began in late August. True to the vision of the institute, the stories read not only illustrated life and survival in the Pine Barrens, but also stressed certain virtues from The Book of Virtues.

A weekly free Manhunt game (a type of hide-and-seek) was also instituted, and soon became a favorite activity, especially for fathers who had weekend custody of their children. The programs grew by word of mouth, and by the time school started, a regular crowd of people were attending the programs each week.

On September 11, The Institute had scheduled representatives from different religious groups to give a benediction for the children returning to school. The benediction was held as scheduled but it was turned into a healing circle, due to the unexpected events that transpired that day. That day, children in attendance had a venue from which to express their fears and ask their questions, and since that day the Womens group has included training women to address fears arising out of the events of September 11.

The programs success did not go unnoticed by the former occupants of the woods: The drug dealers. Daily programs in the woods meant that drug trafficking as usual was impossible in the woods. Members of the Institute actually uncovered stashes of drugs that had to be dropped when students or instructors had unexpectedly entered the woods. Arsonists torched the car of the President of the Institute, burning records, damaging tools and destroying books. Later, the longhouse was vandalized, the tools and equipment used in its building and maintenance were stolen, and the new roof under construction was torn apart.

The arsonists were never caught. The vandals, who were also the ones who stole the tools, were found. Through outreach and conversation, the vandals agreed to help rebuild the longhouse and maintain it. It was recognized that these individuals were precisely the target group the Institute had hoped to reach. We have brought such individuals into the Teen Longhouse Program, where they have been able to learn to teach others to channel their destructive energies into an attitude of caretaking for the earth.

Due to the presence of the Institute in the 88-Acre woods, criminal activity abated considerably. The fire warden reported the least cases of intentional forest fire on record (one) in those woods, and the discovery of the abandoned drugs were clear evidence of at least one foiled drug transaction.

Meanwhile, as a result of the Primitive Survival Skills Course, sixty (60) children in South Toms River will never go hungry or homeless. They have demonstrated that they know what to eat, how to build shelter, and how to make a fire. Many have faced fears they never thought they would overcome. One child, halfway through the survival program looked up at his instructor amazed. "This is even more challenging than Nintendo!" he declared. They are now able to truly help themselves and their families. They can find their own lessons in the wilderness. All we have to do is provide the wilderness for them.


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