$159.89
Kamana book now available in Digital format!
Digital Kamana One Resource Pack2 includes the new Seeing Through Native Eyes CD set
(PDF pages: 278)
If you enjoy eBooks, save earth resources, shipping time and money with a digital Kamana! Kamana Two, Three and Four Program binders are now available in digital format as well, individually and with discounted pack pricing!
With your purchase (or gift!) of a Kamana program, you can receive a
FREE Introductory Month of Kamana Student Services through Kamana.org
Kamana One: Exploring Natural Mystery
- Digital format
Kamana One is our best selling home study course. Thousands have improved their awareness skills and knowledge of nature! Kamana One embarks you on the Kamana journey and it only takes about a month to complete. It will bring you through two weeks of awareness exercises and six areas of ecological study using a field guide and inspiring audio narrated by Jon Young...
Reader's Digest: North American Wildlife
- Print book
This revised edition is a comprehensive, illustrated field guide to 2,000 plants and animals. It includes ecosystems, mammals, birds, trees, plants, reptiles, amphibians and MUCH more. Perfect guide for cross referencing. A perennial favorite of Wilderness Awareness School for teens and above. It is used in all levels of the Kamana Naturalist Training Program.
New! Seeing Through Native Eyes:
A Journey of Connection
8 CD set by Jon Young
Read an interview with Jon!
and an interview with Kamana Director, Dan Corcoran ...see below...
It’s been 15 years since Jon Young, master storyteller and lifetime advocate of nature connection mentoring, released his classic Seeing Through Native Eyes: Understanding the Language of Nature audio series. Please join us in celebrating Seeing Through Native Eyes: A Journey of Connection (8 CD), more than seven hours of reflections and stories on regaining the quality of connection with nature that our ancestors enjoyed. This new series has been completely revised, updated with the full Eight Shields model, oriented towards Nature Connection.
If you’ve been listening to Jon’s classic CDs Advanced Bird Language, Reclaiming our Natural Connections and Tracking Pack One, or have had the privilege of hearing Jon live, you’ll be as excited as we are with this new collection.
Because they lived close to the land, native cultures the world over spoke the language of their place. They had an intimate understanding of plant and animal lifestyles. They knew how to move with grace and ease through the wilderness.
Seeing through native eyes means immersing the senses in nature, and discovering heightened spiritual awareness and a sense of belonging. This audio series lays the foundation for learning about and connecting with the natural world.
Seeing Through Native Eyes — click on Additional Info at top left, for excerpts!
• Foundations of Nature Connection: East
• Natural Origins of Play (Core Routines): Southeast
• The Mentoring Commitment (Tracking and Mammals): South
• Timeless Connection (Plants and Wandering): Southwest
• Weaving Community Threads (Community and Ecology): West
• The Wisdom of Heritage (Ancestors and Heritage): Northwest
• Ancient Conduct, Ancient Skills (Trees and Survival): North
• Routines of Deep Connection and Awareness (Birds and Awareness): Northeast
Kamana One Required Resource
Review by Kamana Director Dan Corcoran
The original Seeing Through Native Eyes had excellent content, though the sound quality was not ideal, which is why our community encouraged us to continued to distribute it for so many years. The difficult sound quality is part of why Jon Young re-recorded it, but that is only half the reason.
The other half (maybe 3/4's?) is that things have changed significantly in the last 15 years of the nature-connection movement. The updated Seeing Through Native Eyes is actually a completely new resource. It has the complete 8 shields of awareness (instead of 6 shields for the original recording). And Jon has more fully honed the essentials of what is truly going on when we start to connect to the natural world.
I tell you this because Jon didn't simply print out the transcripts from the original and re-read them. This is all completely refreshed content. And I was there in person to participate in its creation. It lays a great foundation for how - and more importantly why - learning about nature is vital to being a healthy human.
Interview with Jon Young on the creation of Seeing Through Native Eyes: A Journey of Connection
10.4.11
Q: Why did you re-record the entire Seeing Through Native Eyes audio series instead of adding the two new shields?
Jon: First, there were some sound quality complaints, though that wasn’t the main impetus. We did end up recording two more shields, and we listened to the sound quality difference, and it was really stark. So that kind of stopped us. But more importantly, I think was the messaging piece. Our movement originally grew out of service to people who had read Tom Brown books or had taken his classes and were interested in the mentoring model that went with the training of primitive skills and awareness. And it became clearer when Richard Louv wrote the forward to Coyote’s Guide in 2007 that most of the people who would be interested in our work, and who really needed our work, frankly, may not have ever heard of the story of primitive skills, and might simply be worried about their children who had been diagnosed with sensory process disorder or mild autism or ADHD.
We began to realize around then that our work was kind of leading edge. I don’t want to sound arrogant or over-bold around this, but we accidentally discovered a leading-edge formula. And I really want to be honest and say that we didn’t discover it; we were passing it forward from the great elders and teachers that have passed it on to us. But that it was important for us to recognize that our message is much more about connection, and supportive processes around Nature Connection Mentoring. And that was really different from the original messaging within Seeing Through Native Eyes.
That doesn’t change the value of the original Seeing Through Native Eyes, and we’re working hard now between Wilderness Awareness School and OWLink Media to make sure that we provide listeners to the new Native Eyes the materials they will need to succeed in their naturalist training journey.
Q: Seeing Through Native Eyes, the first series, sold thousands of copies and has been such an incredible influence in a lot of people’s lives. Do you feel that you’ll be able to provide any information still needed from the first series for folks who are going forward into the new series?
Jon: Yes, for one thing, just like you would never get rid of an old, classic Eric Clapton album, because no matter what you’ll never record and recreate that moment in music, or just a great performance — that’s what people have told me about the original Seeing Through Native Eyes. We won’t eliminate that product, it’ll be there. It’s just that it’s not the one we’ll recommend going forward. But we are going to make available written materials that are derivatives out of the original Seeing Through Native Eyes, that will bridge the languaging-changing aspects of the new Native Eyes, and the powerful naturalist training elements that were part of that original Native Eyes.
Q: I’ll be using this series as part of my Kamana program and my experience with the first series is that was really a lot of practical information that helped me with Kamana. How do you feel that the new Native Eyes will affect the Kamana program?
Jon: Over the years, imagine how much feedback I’ve received since 1995 from the Kamana community, both graduates and people who are in the program actively, but also, maybe more importantly, the people who’ve gotten stuck, and have not wanted to move past a certain point. There’s been a sort of subgroup of the overall Kamana group that has essentially complained that the Kamana experience and the Native Eyes experience was a little bit too detail-oriented. It was too much like studying. And it took them away from nature, it didn’t take them into nature. I’ve often had to help them rethink their relationship to Kamana, not as another way to accumulate information, but as a way to really create connection for themselves.
I think the reorientation towards connection will help us remember that the real powerful aspect of Kamana is what nature connection brings. And that the tracking skills and the critical thinking skills that come from the kinds of exercises and things that are in Kamana are not lost. And they’re not taking a back seat to connection, but connection basically jumps up in the front seat, right along side of it. Because I think the connection piece is the unique offer that we are bringing to the world. As nature-connected people, we are going to be really important resources in our communities going forward, and that’s becoming more and more clear.
Q: In practical terms, how do you think this new series will inspire me to a deeper nature connection? What is the main inspirational piece that this new series brings for me in my own personal journey?
Jon: What I’ve been told by the audience that was with us live when we recorded the new Seeing Through Native Eyes was that this brought to consciousness what was unconscious, but felt. People were saying, ‘Wow, you just put words on things that I’ve never realized were fully in me before. You’ve really helped me to understand why this nature connection piece is so important.' And for the people in the room who were Kamana students already, it gave them sort of a reinvigorated feeling around why and how they should approach their various task lists for each of the 8 shields. And, obviously, the third piece for people who are in Kamana but were taking a 6 shields approach, they were suddenly realizing, ‘Ah, that’s what those other 2 shields are, and I can’t wait to add that to my research list’.
Q: What are the two new shields recorded as part of the 8 shields model?
Jon: The newest products out of OWLink Media including Coyote’s Guide as well as Reclaiming our Natural Connections, are all based on 8 shields, and they lay it out pretty clearly. If you want more details, basically you could seeReclaiming our Natural Connections or Coyote's Guide, if you already have those two products. If you don’t, obviously I recommend them highly. The two shields that are being added are the Southeast Shield, which is reflecting the things that make the motivated learner get out there and do stuff on their own. Running out and finding stuff that makes you want to go out and do errands in nature. Things that would actually drive you to your Sit Spot. Things that drive kids to their Sit Spot or just make them go outside because they are super excited about discovering something or learning something. What we would call in Coyote's Guide, Children’s Universal Passions.
The Northwest Shield is the shield of heritage species: things in the natural environment that are passed down between generations and require the human community to care about them and to look after them. Things like heritage oaks in California, or steel head runs or salmon runs, which are familiar to the people where the salmon are still running in their creeks and streams. It takes a community to keep those things moving between generations. You might think of it as the things that caused us to think inter-generationally, in the way that we care for resources.
Q: As a person who is not as savvy about nature connection and who is just not a naturalist in particular, but who really cares about sustainability of the earth and about the future for my children, Kamana has felt a little prohibitive for me to even consider beginning. How do you feel this new series will help the folks like me who are really the majority of our nation?
Jon: I think what it does is it really helps people to get that stepping out the door is a valuable thing. I really emphasize the importance of convenience in your core routines in nature connection. I emphasize the importance as parents to support their children in the nature connection things they are doing, with programs like Wilderness Awareness School and all those other people out there who are using Coyote's Guide methodologies. You know that the parents and aunts and other brothers and sisters, we all have a role to play, to keep the children of the next generation excited and enthusiastic about their relationship to nature. Because there are so many things in our modern society that push us in the opposite direction, as Richard Louv makes so clear inThe Nature Principle, his newest book.
Q: You were really inspired to do this project, you really wanted to bring change from the original way it had been taught. As I listener, I would want to know in the doing of it, what did you find the most inspiring? Maybe in the reaction from the audience during your recording, or just the feeling that you had when you were redoing the series?
Jon: There were a lot of inspirational moments. I think one of the really exciting things was just looking at the diversity and age spread in the room. From elders — we had a 90-plus-year-old poet who delivered a beautiful poem about bird language to us — to some young ones, my children were present, two and four years old. But there were a couple of young fellows that are part of the programs in the region who stayed with us for a good part of it. And everybody in between. Every generation was represented, and from all different walks of life, from different parts of the world, from different ethnic backgrounds. There were a lot of people in the room representing different aspects of the modern world.
I think you’ll hear that in this one part where we actually all took turns offering the thanksgiving words for the beginning of the Seeing Through Native Eyes recording, working on this connection journey version of Native Eyes. Instead of me being the voice, offering the thanksgiving words as we did on the first edition, it was really wonderful to have all these different people step up and take a different piece of it, and offer their sincere gratitude. I think you’ll feel the investment of the people in the audience for this particular project.
Also, in between recording sessions, when we hit the pause button on the recording, and the lively discussions that happened on the floor, people offered input and questions and things that they wanted to be clarified, from their points of view. So, very much the audience was a part of the recording. They influenced what we laid down for folks for this version of Seeing Through Native Eyes. I think there’s a lot of people represented here, in terms of the consensus that built this product. And that was very inspiring for me.
Q: I hear you invited Wilderness Awareness School's Kamana Director, Dan Corcoran, out to the recording. Could you share a bit about what he brought to the process?
Jon: We really felt it was necessary for Dan Corcoran to come down and represent the Kamana.org community. He’s one of the main people who has collected feedback and information on what’s working and what’s challenging, within the Kamana Naturalist Training Program world. Dan was an indispensable resource for this particular edition of Seeing Through Native Eyes. He met with the Kamana graduate Josh Lane, who’s been working at the 8 Shields Institute and OWLink Media for the last eight years. Josh is a very skilled naturalist and mentor, as well as a great tracker. Josh and Dan and myself met for several days and had a lot of discussions, and prepared the outlines from which I delivered the content for Seeing Through Native Eyes. Dan’s gathered experience from Kamana, and Josh’s gathered experience from the OWLink Media side, supported me to deliver the material that you hear. It was really the backbone of what I did. I couldn’t have done it to the extent… what we accomplished was really built on the work of Dan and Josh, for sure.
Q: I understand that Wilderness Awareness School has become the hub for 8 Shields retail sales, using a Nature Store Affiliate Program. How will this support folks in creating funding for their own work?
One of the more exciting things that’s evolved in the last couple of years is the close collaboration of the team at Wilderness Awareness School and the team at OWLink Media and the 8 Shields Institute. We’ve been really looking at the emerging global movement, training leadership in Nature Connection Mentoring. Again and again, where I travel around the world leading workshops and consulting with various community leaders in this important work, people have run into the challenge of how to offer useful products to their families that they are supporting, as well as the young people who are coming through their nature programs. And, again and again, I point them to the Wilderness Awareness School store as a source that has everything that I ever recommend on it, in one place, as well as helpful descriptions of the product and how it relates to the overall work.
Recently, Wilderness Awareness School has offered to provide a store front for all these other programs that are starting. That takes a huge burden off the people who are running those programs locally, to be able to provide areally comprehensive school store, essentially that offers all the things they would ever recommend, and all the things they haven’t even thought of yet. When they go on that website and look, they’ll realize, wow there’s things on there I want to read. I think it’s become the one-stop source for all things nature connection and cultural repair. I think it’s just an amazing opportunity for people out there using the work in Coyote’s Guide to mentor nature in their communities to not only give your families that you support great resources, but also to provide a referral fee back to your organization — which really helps you. So, thanks for looking at that.
Having Wilderness Awareness School as a store front opportunity for every organization out there worldwide that is sharing this work, is an opportunity to really bring unity to our movement — an opportunity for us to work together to create a truly comprehensive collection of resources that helps people of all ages and stages of life to learn the best ways to connect to nature…. Join us!
