Episode 133 - Tracking with Aboriginal Elders, Healing the World with John Stokes
Forest Educator with Ricardo Sierra | A Podcast for Revolutionary Conversations about Nature-Based EducationShow Notes
It was through Tom Brown Jr and his Tracker School that I came to meet John. It was 1984, on a farm in western New Jersey, and he was an instructor at the school, and spending seven days with him and the rest of the staff and Tom changed the direction of my life in a radical way.
John was pulled to New Mexico in 1986, where he founded The Tracking Project, and began running rites of passage camps for boys and girls, as well as adult trainings and retreats. I was incredibly fortunate to spend time in his Nurturing the Roots Mentoring Program, where he had gathered elders from Australia, Sweden, Hawaii, Mexico, Brazil, and across North America. Learning and connecting with those elders and John and his staff was a revelation that blew my mind, because they held a mentoring space that was unlike anything I had experienced before.
This experience changed the way I tracked animals, connected to nature, taught and led my camps, trainings and programs. It even affected my personal and community relationships
In this first of a series of conversations, we dive into what learning tracking does to us and for us as human beings, and John describes his apprenticeship with some of the best trackers in the world.
Please enjoy Episode #133.
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