The Nature of the Village September 7-13, 2008, Overnight
Ages 0-190 years
Family and Community Week: Ambassadors for a New Culture
What compels us to come back, again and again, to notions of Elders, Community, and Village? Is the title 'Elder' just a new status symbol for aging baby boomers? Where do we find our Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunties and Uncles? Has the word Community ever helped anybody? We know "it takes a Village", when does the Village actually do it? In what way will we save the world: through programs and bureaucracy, or deepening connection to Land, Family, Hearth and Home? How do we choose relationships, not slogans? Why do we habitually prioritize career and education, over family and friends? Can consensus processes be abused? Do non-profits and idealists value their mission more than their people? Why do we continue to try to fix schools? Why do we fear a young person's innate ability to learn? Can charismatic leaders and gurus, by their very nature, perpetuate our dysfunctional culture, without realizing the harm they cause? What does it mean really to live as a Village?
For Nature of the Village, you participate in an agile teams environments, where live conversations and take the actions that the village needs the most. You jump in feet first during the first hour of the first day of the week, setting the agenda and then holding the reins for 7 days of high-energy connections and activities with friends both familiar and those you have yet to meet.
For Individuals, Families, Organizations, Businesses, Kids, Adults, Grandmas and Grandpas and much more!
Family and Community Week: We are working our way back to a new culture. A community were relationships with one another and the natural world are paramount. Our Nature of Teams model provides a critical foundation as we rebuild the Village of support and care the world needs now and 7 generations into the future.
Join us as the family TrackersNW, our friends, and our community, both locally and nationally, come together to recreate and learn from the experience of a functional and healthy Village. We begin with key natural building and food projects, gaining critical skills for a localized and sustainable economy. Everything is hands on this week, working, singing and relaxing through the day. We eat together, celebrating at a table and around a campfire. We play music every night, carrying us into the evening. All this, plus we REMOVE environmental educators (that's us) from the center as we help families and friends to discover their own ways to connect themselves and our children to the natural world and each other.
Teams: The New Foundation
For healthy community and families we need to learn how to give and receive support in the most efficient way possible. This does not mean always sacrificing or comprising, it means using energetic new tools of communication and organization to find more efficient ways of getting the necessary work done.
The "Nature of Teams" model is our starting point. You then make it your own. We learn how meeting the core needs of the individual is a priority for survival. Shelter, water, fire and food are four elements essential before we can even begin to have a conversation about other more abstract ideals. We look to one another less as mentors and more as collaborators. Our children even benefit from this new level of quality; trusted with more responsibility that successfully contributes to the health of the village, youth are empowered to be more competent and grow into truly powerful caretakers for their families.
Laughter and Tragedy: The New Story
Skill building games for improv and theater help build your ability to shake off the stilted, passive and dull communication found in many "consensus processes". We learn that every emotion is critical for "peacemaking". Like a large Italian family or a rowdy Irish clan we give ourselves the freedom to be expressive and make communication an almost theatrical and celebratory experience, one endowed with laughter and intense creativity and clarity.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge: The Old Way of the Old Steward
How hunter-gatherers connected to the land is a wealth of stories so diverse that elude full and complete text on the subject. They held a constant conversation and court with the deer, the nettle and the oaks. The hunter tracked and listened. The wapato gatherer foraged attentively. Elders are people who saw the land growing over 80 years while relying on the even older stories of their own grandmother or grandfather to shape their own unique choices. There was never a static answer, humans are capable of constantly and naturally mapping their landscape with questions of how we can create healthier and richer relationships. At the core of this is tracking, mapping of both individuals and their relationships in systems. Awareness of our place is often seen as the most relevant survival skill for now and many generations to come.
Wild Health: Happy People
Doctors and healers are useful yet the regard for ones own health is even more critical. Through SHIFT, our bio regional martial art, we are empowered to think about nutrition and health not only for ourselves but for our children. We discover that their is not distinction between the health of our environment and the health of our 
bodies. We move like we are really alive, our hands start to form callousses and show the lines of life. This is how we reclaim adventure from television and the media, bringing a zest for life back into the day to day.
Family, Food and the Land: The Table and Sitting Down Together
Our old men and women gardeners are tenders of this tradition. The cutting edge of horticulture is taking up the baton. We will challenge what is commonly thought of as "gardening or permaculture" using tracking and systems mapping with a rewild mind to reshape a more holistic and functional view of stewardship. This is about the fruition driving the design, the celebration of the table becoming a reminder and result of the unending depth of relationships.
The Vision
Being able to take your choices and begin to grasp what they mean for the generations now and into the future involves the weight and breadth of the past. This is where our Village really comes to life and looks beyond themselves as individuals and we begin to truly celebrate why we are here. This is at the core of the Nature of the Village, how does every choice and every action affect the future. Join us and together we will figure it out!
The Nature of the Village community camp includes
Who Ages 0-190 (and older) More scholarships available, especially to families. Children 4 years and under attend free! Please contact us to arrange both. Register Online (below) or by mail Register for individual participant $675
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| Arriving National & International Participants Its easy to fly into Portland's airport and get a ride out to your workshop. We pick up and host up to two nights before. Fees $75 for each non-workshop night: meals and safe lodging included. Contact Us to make your travel arrangements. | |