Teaching Drum Outdoor School

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Teaching Drum Outdoor School is a non-profit wilderness skills school located in Three Lakes, Wisconsin. The school consists of an administrative cente,( sometimes referred to by the Algonquian name Nad'mad'ewining), a small wilderness camp (Mashkodens), and a larger primitive camp (Nishnajida).

1 Wilderness Guide Program
- 1.1 Approach
2 Other Activities
3 External links

[edit] Wilderness Guide Program

The heart of Teaching Drum is a year-long wilderness immersion program where students live continuously in a primitive Northwoods camp replete with wigwams, lean-tos and other primitive structures while learning and applying traditional hunter-gatherer crafts and skills such as tracking, foraging, shelter building, canoeing, and hide tanning. Students in the course, which is named the Wilderness Guide Program, also focus on improving interpersonal skills, and on developing wilderness and self-awareness through methods such as communal clan living, talking circles, dream analysis, sweat lodge ceremonies, and a general sharing of observations. The course takes place at the school’s primitive camp named Nishnajida, which is near a small lake in a headwaters area of the Nicolet National Forest. The course is run under the expert guidance of Tamarack Song. There are typically 10-15 students accepted into the course each year. The school has been running the course since 1999.

[edit] Approach

In comparison with other wilderness skills schools Teaching Drum has an unorthodox approach. This is reflected in the school’s insistence that it is more of a “Native Lifeway” school than a traditional primitive skills school. The emphasis is on holistic experiential learning, spiritual healing, and the development of awareness. This is seen as being more effective than individually learning isolated skills out of context. In fact, heightened awareness is seen as critical to the effective learning and application of wilderness skills.

[edit] Other Activities

Approximately 10 staff people also work and live at the school’s administrative center, Nad’mad’ewining. They mainly give support to the year-long program, but also work on wilderness skills, writing, and publishing projects throughout the year.

Adjacent to the administrative center, some staff and former Wilderness Guide Program students live at a primitive camp, Mashkodens. The school also hosts month-long summer internships here.