New for 2008!

The Canoemaker's Journey

June 22-July 19, 2008
Cost: $2,200

includes all teaching, craft materials & supplies,

housing (tents) and food.

Four weeks  •   Making a multitude of stone tools  •   Peeling bark  •   Lashing a sapling frame •   Assembling an elm bark canoe • Carving and burning an authentic dugout canoe •   Taking them out in the lake  •   Paddling   •  Fishing  •   Exploring •  All using stone age technology  •

It is going to take you about a week and a half tol learn to make your own stone axe, stone adz, stone knife, stone chisel, and a series of stone flakes.  The tools will be accurate replicas of existing artifacts.   We are going to show you how!

These tools are what you will use to make two vessels that were essential to traveling and using the multitude of waterways here in the northeast:  an Iroquois style elm bark canoe and a dugout canoe from a pine, basswood or cottonwood log.    Most of what we need to build the boats will be found on the Hawk Circle campus, which will allow you to see every stage of indentification, assessing, gathering, and using these important resources.

We will build a simple ladder, which will allow us to use stone axes to cut and remove bark from a standing tree. We will use specific saplings to create the frame for the bark canoe and assemble it on site. The log canoe will be shaped with your took kit as we burn out parts of the log. The tools are mostly used to maintain an even shape or to speed work in difficult areas. Numerous ways to control the progress of fire inside the log canoe will be explored.

Improvised paddles will be made from bark and one from wood using stoneage splitting and shaping techniques. The culmination of our work will end in the launching and testing of our newly made boats and equipment at a local lake.

Much of the source materials include the archaeological existence and relevance of canoe making tools and the sites from which they are found, from the lamoka culture onward. You will be able to recognize tools that are specific to boat making and ones that can serve many purposes.

You will come home with your own stone tool kit, many notes and handouts (we welcome the use of a camera or video camera), and one boat to every four students: the division of this works well with groups of students sponsored by a college wishing to display the boat, or a museum.

These boats will be museum quality replicas that can add greatly to any college or university's collection of artifacts that spark student interest, understanding and learning.

Please contact Barry Keegan for more information about this valuable, fun and unique course!

Barry's eMail address is    

barsar@telenet.net

or call him at the Hawk Circle office at 607-264-3396.

The Summer Graduate Program Curriculum

These options listed below are not available for the beginning of summer of 2008 because of the above course running. However, we can work with you during the month of August, 2008, if you would like to pursue these studies. Contact Barry Keegan at barsar@telenet.net for more information.

Our summer graduate program is for students who want to work to take their skills to a new level of mastery and understanding. This course helps students who are ready and can work independently, create long term shelters, effective bows and arrows or prepare for an extended survival trek. We work with the students to arrange an individual course of study, and then assist the students throughout the program to achieve the goals desired. Students can choose from a variety of different areas to grow, and there is considerable effort to match the student’s abilities with the goals chosen.The flexibility and breadth of this course makes it perfect for advanced students who want to learn but don’t need someone leaning over their shoulder each moment!

We have a rich educational culture with lots of summer staff, great food, camp activities and pleasant warm weather for whenever we need a break from our intensive studies too. Our summer camp creates an environment that allows for healthy stimulation, learning, new growth, conversation and community connection. Students can learn about organic gardening, join in community work projects, go wandering along the stream or help with preparing food in our kitchen too. There is much joy, peace and growth to be found in service work, and giving back to the community completes the circle.

Another unique aspect of this program is that it allows students to learn in a mostly one-on-one situation, which is highly rare for most primitive or wilderness skills programs at this level. Most other schools do not offer advanced skills, and teach the basics of shelter, bow drill techniques or ‘entry level’ skills. Our program can take you further.....

If this program intrigues you, please feel free to call me to discuss your interests and we will see if the Summer Graduate Program is right for you. I look forward to seeing you grow!

-Ricardo Sierra

A Partial List of Ideas for Consideration:
Wet and Dry Scrape Buckskin:

Five hides, tools, pouches, moccasins, shirts or other clothing and tanning furred hides.   Students will be guided in all phases of the native tanning processes, including tool making, tanning options, storage, materials and more.   Bark tanning, rawhide lacing, pouches, parfleches, containers and more....

Long Term Shelters:

Choice of Thatch Hut, Bark Wigwam, Advanced Wickiups, Earth Lodge or Log Hogan shelters. Fireplace construction, foundations, materials gathering and preparation, construction, safety and maintenance will be learned as well.

Red Hawk’s Journey:

This program teaches students about the sweatlodge experience, making drums for personal healing, connection to the earth and self, rawhide rattles, sacred herb gathering and solo/vision quest experiences.

Basketry Intensive:

This program includes identifying and gathering the materials for primitive baskets such as bark baskets, ash splint baskets, coil baskets, woven sapling baskets and much more.    Basketmaker's tools will be made and used, as well as various useful gathering and storing and repairing tips.

Primitive Pottery:

Gathering, preparing, collecting, shaping, drying, firing preparation and all issues relevant to making succesful pottery implements in the wilderness.   Students will make several different style pots, cooking vessels, clay beads, pinch pots, native clay processing and survival temper additives to insure a successful pottery firing.

Wilderness Trek Preparation:

Planning a wilderness retreat in the near future? Come here and get all of your skills in order, such as fire skills, cooking, shelter work, advanced cordage, stone tools, wild foods and other skills.   In addition to learning new skills, you will develop the structure to practice your skills, raising your proficiency, speed and ability in your chosen areas..

Stone Tools Intensive:

Stone axes, adzes, projectile points, percussion flaking, pressure flaking, knives, drill points, wood, antler and modern tools as well as everything related else to creating successful stone tools.

Preparing for the Hunt:

Bowmaking, arrowmaking, quivers of rawhide, bark or cattail, observation of deer habits, stalking, tracking, hand forged steel points, stone points, bowstring preparation, scent issues, camoflage and blinds, connecting with the spirit of the deer and other issues related to the hunting of deer in a sacred manner.   An awesome course that will greatly help in your ability to find, see and get close to deer in the manner that primitive longbow hunting requires!

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We have dozens of other course topics, advanced studies and support that are too numerous to mention.   If you have a skill or experience that you would like to study, then call us and we can discuss whether we can help you achieve your goals!