The Tracking Project

08/03/2026

Greg Vaccaro

I went on FB for the first time in a long time last week and I saw that my Brother Greg – aka Master Vaccaro – had posted this picture on his birthday in May. Maybe it was the t-shirt, but it made me laugh to realize that Greg has been with me and the work of The Tracking Project (TTP) for 41 years. Where did the time go?

Master Vaccaro brought us a lifetime of martial arts training – self-defense techniques, Taekwondo and other open hand styles, Tai Chi as well as Modern Arnis that he studied with its founder, Remy Presas. The stick work of Arnis went together perfectly with our stick-based survival teachings. Our students always knew through his demonstrations that Greg was for real!

We met at the Omega Institute in 1985 when I was invited to do a tracking class that would dovetail with an annual event called the Sacred Circle. The Circle was conceived by Muskogee Elder Phillip Deere, Will Channing and others as a forum for traditional Native American elders to present “what was rally happening “ in their communities. The blending of the Circle with the tracking class was a winner. The elders enjoyed the tracking teachings and they would often invite TTP to visit their communities and work with the youth.

This idea of Native youth and elders guiding us to create an effective curriculum for connecting young people to the Natural World has been the work of TTP since that time.
(www.thetrackingproject.org)

My work with an Aboriginel college in Australia ( 1978 - 1983 ) had introduced me to a long, slow commitment to community education. The Aboriginal people used to say:

5 years — Why did you bother?
10 years — Not bad.
15 years — Might be a friend.
20 years — Good job.

Thinking of Greg’s 41 years and all the other dedicated men and women who helped with the hundreds / thousands of students we have taught through the years, I can only say
“ Great stuff! It’s been an honor. Thank You! ”

11/16/2025

Not so often you get a set of great eagle tracks!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQ96Er2CjXF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

08/16/2025

Natur Akademin / The Tracking Project 1998

"This is a short exemple of what Naturakademins (The Nature Academy's) Sustainability work can be like. Recorded in the Stockholm Archepelago.

08/16/2025

The Tracking Project team in Sweden 1998

Jake Swamp (Mohawk Nation) and Andy Buster (Miccosukee tribe) joined John Stokes and Louis Blue Cloud Greensfelder for a series of cultural gatherings in Sweden. We were hosted by Göran Gennvi, Håkan Orrbryngel Eliasson and others from the Nature Academy.

06/17/2025

THE OPENING ADDRESS

�We are happy to announce the recent release of a wonderful short film:

The Opening Address
(https://vimeo.com/1011784540)

�This project has been several years in the making and for us began in October 2020 when a gifted film maker — Jess Lowe Chaverri— came to our office with the idea of creating a visual poem with the words of the Opening spoken, accompanied by inspired visuals from the Natural World. Over the next year we worked with Jess, guiding her to the Mohawk community at Akwesasne (New York), to elder Tom Sakokwenionkwas Porter, Alvera Konwanahktotha Sargent, the staff and students of the Akwesasne Freedom School.

“Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen (also known as The Thanksgiving Address or The Opening Address) is a message for the world, reminding us all to walk gently on the Earth and live in reciprocity with one another.
Tom has translated “Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen” as “the words we say before we do anything important.”

“ What we do to one part of the web of life, we do to ourselves.”

It can be accessed at the URL above and can also be viewed on the Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School’s website (https://www.foafs.org/)

Directed by: Konwanahktotha Alvera Sargent and Jess Lowe Chaverri
Executive Producers: John Stokes and Dr. Kathleen Kelly

This film is presented by The Akwesasne Freedom School, a sovereign Mohawk immersion institution, which is dedicated to preserving and passing down the language and culture that colonization tried to erase. Through the wisdom of the elders, they are building a future where the Mohawk language and identity thrive, ensuring that generations to come will have a profound connection to their heritage.”

Film Festivals

Since Jess released the movie on Thanksgiving day 2024, the film has been accepted for showings at numerous film festivals with the Mohawk elders attending for Q & A sessions after the movie. In late May it was used to open the Telluride Mountain Film festival.

The Telluride Daily Planet wrote: The short, 10 minute film was followed by a powerful symposium on “A New Era of Conservation: How Indigenous Leadership is Re-shaping What We Thought We Knew About Land Management”, featuring former Secretary of the Interior in the Biden administration Deb Harland (Laguna Pueblo), Alvera Sargent and other ground-breaking indigenous leaders in the field.

The symposium had the stated goal to “re-indigenize conservation and the vital role of Indigenous voices, knowledge and history in conservation movements.”

�Please support the work of The Tracking Project, of Jess Lowe, Tom Porter, Alvera, The Freedom School and other indigenous language immersion programs.

04/28/2025

Passing of a Trickster

We learned early yesterday from our friends in Santa Fe — Scott Kuipers and Able West — that our long-time friend and brother Keith Strever had passed away. I had met Keith when he came through the Tracker School in New Jerseyj in 1984 as a student and when we held our first New Mexican workshop in 1985, Keith was there.

From that time he taught every class we ran until 2016. Thousands of students — Hawkeye Training, Dreamtracking, Tracking in the Southwest, Nurturing the Roots… We traveled together to Hawai’i several times, to Sweden and the Phillipines. Anyone who came to a course over those 30 years got to meet the wild and wonderful character that was Keith.

He was a Vietnam Veteran, a great tracker and survivalist, sharing his intimate knowledge of the mountains of New Mexico, his love of plants and plant medicines, horses, archery, cultures of the world, esoteric knowledge… He loved the Tracking Project and the way we were able to share our teachings with the youth and elders of so many Native traditions. He especially loved the Opening Address (Thanksgiving Address) of the Haudenosaunee. He cherished his dreams and loved the opportunity to share them through our daily dream circle.

Over the last ten years, he hung tough even though his mobility was severely challenged. He was a great enthusiast of aliens and several times he called me to tell me they had come in his dreams and healed him, filling him with light and helping him “hang in.’

Keith was a unique character, a funny and magical man with a wide circle of people who loved him. He would always bring some natural object or flowers back to camp from his hikes and put them on display in our bush kitchen. Because of this, he was given the role of “Minister of Beauty.’

He will be missed and the whole global family of The Tracking Project send him our deepest Aloha. Farewell, Brother Keith.

08/21/2024

The Passing of a Great Teacher — Tracker Tom Brown, Jr.
January 29, 1950 - August 16, 2024

I spent most of yesterday (August 19) on the phone, accepting condolences from around the world for the loss of Tom Brown, Jr. who passed last Friday, (August 16). Though we had not seen each other in many years, there was a time in 1981 when I was taken by friends to Tom’s Standard course in New Jersey and we became close friends.

Tom was already in a very productive phase of his life as a teacher and author and I was visiting the United States from Adelaide, South Australia where I was working with the Aboriginal community at the Aboriginal Community College. Some of the elders had “recruited” me to help with the training of the youth and I was learning many things from the experience. As some of the young men had said to me, “When we’re in the classroom, we listen to you. But when we are out in the bush, you should listen to us.”

I had no idea how much they were teaching me until I went through Tom’s course as if I was born to tracking! I would do things in the class and Tom would come over — “I’ve never seen a man do that.” He invited me to do more of his classes and said, “When you come back to the States, come and teach with me.”

Tom had something so valuable — he actually had created a “method” and a curriculum for teaching tracking and survival that was remarkably effective. I carried his teachings back to the Aboriginal elders and we began to blend the Nature teachings from Turtle Island with those of Australia. I teamed up with Dookie O’Loughlin who took me to meet legendary Pitjantjatjara tracker Jimmy James. Uncle Jimmy was already 72 years old when we met and he was happy to have a young “partner.” We enjoyed some remarkable adventures.

In 1984 I returned from 7 years in Australia and I took Tom up on his offer to teach with him. I moved to New Jersey and for the next two years taught at the Tracker School, helping out with most all of Tom’s courses. I had begun to work with the leaders and youth of the Iroquois Confederacy, so I worked it out with Tom that two Native youth could attend his classes at no cost. (I heard from someone recently that this arrangement has continued up to the present.)

One of the young students who came through the school, Ricardo Sierra, went on to become a well-known wilderness educator, mentored by both Tom and by The Tracking Project. In the past few days, he posted a piece on his FB about how FUNNY Tom was, and I thought I would pick up on that thread.

This picture from 1984 shows Tom, a fellow named Colin and myself on “camo day.’ Tom had us fill a bunch of buckets with mud and then he called the class over. He took a big handful of mud and a nice “crown” of grass. He said, “Most people think John is too spiritual and they would never do this to him.” He rubbed the mud into my face and put the grass on my head.
I smiled and got a big handful of mud. “Most people think Tom is too big and strong and they would never do this to him,” I said. I pulled his shorts out and shoved the mud down his pants.

That began a huge mud fight which then turned into the whole class getting mudded up for “camo day.”

Tom was a Coyote, a Trickster, and he was really very funny. But he was also as serious as can be about Life and about caring for the Natural World. He leaves behind a library of books that he wrote and thousands (and hundreds of thousands) of students that he taught over these many years.

He will be missed.

07/17/2024

Special Issue — July 2024

National Geographic

How Global Indigenous Communities are Shaping the Future

03/29/2024

Chalo Li Wells Once upon a time Chris Wells was pushing me to do a camp for young men in northern New Mexico. The Tracking Project was just beginning to do youth camps and work with Native youth and elders.

We called it Hawkeye Training and held the first year at the Lama Foundation. Chalo came to camp that first year and we took this classic "Uncle / Nephew" photo.

He came to Hawkeye three or four more times and in 2000 came on as a staff member.

We had plenty of years to connect since that time, mostly by phone when he was down in Mexico or traveling.

A few weeks ago, In early February , Chalo called. He was saying "All I want to do is go traveling with you, Uncle, maybe go to Hawai'i or Tahiti and we can do a healing and say the Thanksgiving Address..."

Sorry we never got to do that, Chalo, but we did a lot of cool things together and you will be with me forever.

Aloha