Teaching Drum Outdoor School

Mission: Native-Earth balanced lifeway

From www.ic.org/directory/teaching-drum-outdoor-school/:

We are a community dedicated to preserving and sharing the skills and ways of our tribal ancestors, honoring the Old Ways of clan living in balance with our relations. We use the vital tools of truth-speaking, pattern-breaking, awareness and attunement exercises, threaded through with the basics like honor, respect. The talking circle is our forum. The wild herbs are our healers. The Earth is our Mother. All the creatures of the land are our guides.

Our primitive camp, Nishnajida--a cluster of bark-and-thatch wigwams--lies five miles from our office center. There, we guide the yearlong Wilderness Guide Program where students from all over the world come to make their clothing from skins; fish and forage for food; make craft items like bows, bowls, spoons, baskets; learn how to track, how to build, inhabit, and maintain lodges. Most of all, students learn about themselves and how to genuinely live as a clan. Everyone in our community is involved with the maintenance of this program, as well as with our own personal projects, passions, and growth.

A second primitive camp, Mashkodens, is our living-learning center where experienced staff members live and Wilderness Guide Program graduates come for extended internships in native lifeway. Mashkodens serves as a doorway where people from all over can come to experience the Old Way as it is actually lived in our contemporary context, for one to three months at a time.

Walking in the footsteps of the natives who were here before us, our programs are semi-nomadic, with winter and summer lodges at our primitive camps and temporary seasonal camps for activities such as fishing, wild ricing, and leek-gathering at various locations. Those at our support/office/administrative center join in these seasonal activities as well.

At the support center we live in wood-stove heated cabins, use electricity, computers, cars, and telephones, but our approach is to live as simply and closely to the Earth Mother as possible. Many of us do not use indoor toilets, and we have limited bathing facilities, but we do have running water in a couple of our homes. We purchase local organic food, scavenge and fish for our wild meat, and forage for some of our summer fruits and greens, and nuts.

Information about open positions, volunteer opportunities, internships, classes, and the Wilderness Guide Program are available from our website.

We are a pet-free, alcohol/tobacco/drug-free community.

A service of the Data Commons Co-op. The project has been supported by Equal Exchange, the Cooperative Charitable Trust, the USDA, and many others - thank you! Tech volunteers over the years include: Benjamin Bradley with support from GAIA Host. Ben Mauer with support from Quilted. Paul Fitzpatrick. Ronin Tech Collective, Brattleboro Tech Collective, Sligo Computer Services. Jason Lemieux. Default map tiles courtesy of MapQuest. Default map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA.