“It is the creative and skilled children of ancient days that grew-up to build the beautiful America that we enjoy today. We need those kids again now to adapt to future technologies, and to lead the world carefully forward with their traditional life experience and wisdom.”
Ben Jamin Walker
Some previous Summer Camp Mentors
All of our staff are trained in First-Aid and CPR, Youth Protection, tool and fire safety. And all of our adults have the highest standard of FBI/DOJ fingerprint background screening. We ensure that your child is getting a true mentorship and an authentic traditional childhood experience, as expressed in our photos and camp videos, now in our 12th Los Gatos Summer.
TWA school and camp founder Ben Walker have had a lifetime of careers in environmental and experiential education. And our Tribal Wisdom Academy adult team of Mentors are trained to be role-models of pioneer skills, safe practices, good character, mindfulness, and deep nature connection.
“The TWA historic childhood experience is preparing your child for any world future.”
Founder and Executive Camp Director Ben Walker with students learning the skill of Fire-by-friction with a Pump Drill.
Ben Jamin Walker traveled in over 30 countries, lived alone with tribes that include the Kung San Bushmen of the African Kalahari in 1984, the Cree Nation of sub-arctic Canada, tribes in the deep jungles of Honduras (and many other tribes) and then returned to teach. Ben has had a lifetime of learning traditional life-skills directly from tribal peoples.
Wilderness survival “life experience” is how kids historically developed their brain and body to its full human design-potential. Ben focuses on giving our young students real skills and self-directed camp experiences. We hope that each student will grow to become a solid adult, and become a mentor to future generations, as mankind has done throughout history.
In his younger days, Ben taught summers at BSA Camp Winton, and Boy Scout Camp Chawanakee, and 3 Mexican Scout camps in the coastal jungle of Mexico's Central Pacific Coast. Ben has extensive experience working with many other camps as well, including camps created and directed by Ben himself since the 1980’s. Ben has walked across the Rocky Mountains, literally from the Idaho potato fields to Jackson Hole Wyoming, with only a wool army blanket instead of a backpack, a 5-pound sack of flour, and no map and no compass. Ben has built log rafts on the Snake River in Wyoming, and the Mississippi, and also the Patuca River in Honduras, and has built a canoe made out of canvas and branches on the Fraser River in British Columbia (twice). And that was just Ben’s young days.
Ben retired in 2014 after 15 years of working as a professional Naturalist for Merced County Office of Education's Yosemite Outdoor School at Green Meadows, where he taught over 30,000 boys and girls on 5-day overnight forest adventures featuring his outdoor classes in the natural sciences.
Ben specializes in teaching a great variety of ancient and modern skills which are a natural part of human childhood. Ben’s goal for Tribal Wisdom Academy day camp students is for each child to “Be prepared to thrive in any world future” through skills and social-emotional developmental experiences. This happens naturally when kids are allowed to build treehouses, make stuff, and discover how to build (and be) a village.
Camp Founder BEN WALKER has written articles in:
Pages 21 and 57 of The TRADITIONAL BOWYER'S BIBLE, Vol. 2 & 3.
Page 77 of THE BULLETIN OF PRIMITIVE TECHNOLOGY, Vol. 1, #4.
Articles in the first 2 issues of PRIMITIVE ARCHER MAGAZINE, plus Vol. 2, issue 4.
Article in THE BACKWOODSMAN MAGAZINE, Vol 15, #5.
And has been featured in several full-page newspaper articles in the US and Canada.
Ben Jamin Walker is your mentor-for-adventure!
