December 12 , 2000

DEAR FRIENDS,

Greetings to you all from our high desert home in New Mexico, "the Heart of Aztlán, desert of the white herons and cranes." In literature and myth, the legacy of Aztlán is one of accomplishment and culture, of peace and art. We have carried this inspiration within us as we traveled to the four directions, sharing our system of natural and cultural awareness. Read on for news of our recent activities, our annual Project Report, special reports on our mentor project's Reunion 2000, our environmental awareness camps in Brazil, plus our schedule of upcoming events, plans for 2001 and more.

The tracks have led us in many directions—from the banks of the Rio Grande to the windswept beaches of Ceará and the red earth anthills of Brazil's cerrado, from the lands of the Iroquois in upstate New York to the lava flows of Hawai'i's Big Island, from the elk meadows and vegas of the San Pedro mountains to the turquoise waters and coconut groves of southern Mindanao. Deepening our work with old friends, connecting with new groups, we have continued our teachings and travels.

Since June, projects have included: our 14th Hawkeye Training camp of tracking/survival and awareness skills for young men, with the advanced Hawkeye Scout Training running the same week; the Dreamtracking camp of tracking/survival skills and the Arts of Life for girls; providing support for the elders of the Iroquois confederacy through "Teachings from the Natural World" for the annual Ganondagan Youth and Elders Gathering (New York state); local school visits and library dance/storytelling programs in Corrales; a third year of camps for young Brazilians with Projeto Pegadas Brasil; and the Wild Friends' Third Wildlife Summit meeting on "Wildlife and Water" in Albuquerque.

2001

If you have called or emailed us in the last few months, you have probably gotten a big "Aloha" from Miki Maeshiro, who is on sabbatical with us from the Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu. Miki, a participant in our mentor program as well as a Grade 6 teacher whom we have worked with for a decade, is researching our community education programs, especially as they apply to Native communities, with the hope of bringing this information back to the Hawaiian community and the strategic development plans of her school. Her assistance has been invaluable in handling the office work, answering the phone, sending out orders and enlarging the circle of distributors who carry our products. In the next year, we will continue many of the classes and camps from the year 2000. Classes for the general public will include our camps for youth—Hawkeye Training, Hawkeye Scout and Dreamtracking—and our annual tracking classes at Omega Institute in August. We have plans to resurrect our Tracking in the Southwest trip sometime in the near future. We will expand our work in Sweden to include two visits in April and June, with two visits also to Brazil which will include the first of three annual mentor trainings there.

www.thetrackingproject.com

The construction of our website, first begun early this year by Louis Blue Cloud and Cary Odes, with the assistance of Jesse Bruchac, has now been taken over by our friend—artist, performer and webweaver Geejay Arriola. Working from Davao City, the Philippines, she has assembled all the images and text we have sent her under the template of our Turtle. Information on our lineage, staff, programs, schedule, mentor trainings, etc., will be accessible by clicking on various of the thirteen plates of the turtle's shell. We expect the site to be ready by mid—January. Meet us in cyberspace!

Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural World

We are happy to announce the publication of the Portuguese edition of the Thanksgiving Address book—Palavras de Agradecimento: Saudaçoes ao Mundo Natural. Our thanks to Paola Simoni Silveira in Brasília and others for their help in translating these words. With this sixth language edition, we have over 31,000 copies of the book in print.

As funds allow, we will continue to develop this bilingual series dedicated to bringing the minds of the people of the world together in appreciation of one another, the natural world and the spirit of life itself. Next in our publication list are the Bisayan language translation from the Philippines, and a French translation which we recently received from the Mohawk chiefs' office.

We extend our thanks to our many translators and to the Haudenosaunee, the people of the Iroquois Confederacy, for preserving these words "from the beginning of time," and offering them to us at this important time in history.

Other Books of Note

Kevin (Dookie) O'Loughlin, Aboriginal cultural educator with Tauondi College in Adelaide, South Australia, recently sent us a copy of Lost and Found: The Life of Jimmy James Black Tracker by Robert Holmes (The Printing Press, Port Lincoln, S.A., 2000). Dookie and I went together to Uncle Jimmy's reservation in 1981 to invite him to make a tracking presentation for the students of the Aboriginal Community College. From that first meeting with this famous tracker until his passing in 1991, I remained a friend and student. Uncle Jimmy was truly an inspiration for the work of The Tracking Project. Try to find this book if you can and "treat yourself to an insight into the remarkable individual who truly was a legend in his own time."

From Joseph and Jim Bruchac we've received two new children's books they have authored as a team: At Home on the Earth and Native American Games and Stories. Each book contains mention of work with The Tracking Project, and the Games and Stories book includes many of our favorite games and awareness exercises, together with a beautiful acknowledgement of our project. Contact: The Ndakinna Wilderness Project, 23 Middle Grove Road, Greenfield Center, New York 12833. Phone: 518-583-9980; email: asban@together.net.

And Blackberry Books has recently published "a collection of stories, poems, photos, reports from the various way stations" of Japanese poet Nanao Sakaki's life. Entitled Nanao or Never: Nanao Sakaki Walks Earth A, this 75th birthday tribute to Nanao contains a chapter I submitted which offers some vignettes from a poetry tour of Aboriginal urban and outback communities which Gary Snyder, Nanao and I made in 1981 and which we called Poems of Land and Life. The essays, stories and poems these two great writers published in America and Japan after our tour helped to bring greater awareness of the Aboriginal Australians to the world. (Contact: Gary Lawless, Blackberry Books, 617 East Neck Road, Nobleboro, Maine 04555; www.blackberrybooksme.com.)

Thanks

We send our special thanks to all those who have pledged themselves to our work, to our many contributors, to the foundations who believe in what we do and to all our supporters—Thank you for enabling us to continue our work. (For a list of foundations and trusts who gave us grants in the last year, please see our Project Report.)

And to our family, staff, Council of Advisors, friends and guest artists who give so generously of themselves—Miki & Brian, Geri, Keith, Able & Natsuko, Vicenta, Solar & Renate, Joe, Nancy, Jade, Kainoa, India, Cary, Steven, PAZ, Rita & family, Jeffrey, Ruth, Comet & Leslie, Grant & Nancy, Geejay & Pido, Gus, Lyndee and the IID staff, Andy & Helene, Jake & Judy, Joe & Carol, Jim, Jesse, Pete & Jeannette, Tom & Alice, Greg & Vicki, Teo & Ana, Zuleikha, Chris, Glen B., Mililani, Kuki, Vicki, Toshiko, Yuklin, Kahele, Brad, Stan, Ipo, Kema, Tammi & kids, Sandy, Ed S., Craig & Luana, Bob & Dean, Karen, Mike, Kate, Göran, Håkan and the staff of NaturAkademin, Nancy, Dafna, Hank and the people at the Circle A Ranch, Satara & Tai, Mike & Tanya, Edgar, Warren, Bill, Clayton, Judith, Bento, Paola, Iara, Edison Luís, Edison Saraiva & family, Edison Lodi & family, Pádua & Marcia, Paolo & Maggie, Janaína, Silvia, Salvia, Marcílio, Raphael, John & Cynthia, John & Bunny, Dan & Diana, Dr. Dan, Hugo & Cynthia, Dookie, Mike, Frank (who mails all our newsletters), Terri at Westwind, and Andrew Main . many thanks.

The Healing Energies of Water

We have put our attention on water this year, a good way to balance out all the fire in our program. We have learned that researchers are finding ways to prove that water is alive, that it has a memory of what it is and that it has ways to revitalize itself. In Charlie Ryrie's book The Healing Energies of Water (Journey Editions, 1999), she reports: "A snowflake is made up of a billion billion molecules of water organized in a specific and stable arrangement. You will never ever find two identical snowflakes, even if you spend all your life trying. But if you melt a snowflake and refreeze it under the same conditions, it will refreeze into exactly the same pattern, not a similar arrangement, but precisely the same one! It remembers its previous arrangement and goes right back to it." So, we encourage you to take some time to look again at water, what a marvelous substance it is, and as Ryrie notes, "we soon realize that water itself is the source of power, and if we appreciate its qualities we can become empowered."

JOHN STOKES
Director

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