The Drum Making - Keres Language Camp is a pilot program for The Native Language and Sustainability Project, a flagship program at HAMAATSA for Native youth and adults. The long-term goal of this project is to revive and strengthen the use of everyday conversational language for Native youth and families whose language is presently endangered. The project infuses a conversational language program conducted through reviving cultural lifeways and learning sustainable living models for addressing environmental and health concerns within Native communities. These models include reviving ages-old passive solar housing through traditional adobe building methods and stone construction, integrating modern methods of renewable energy and land conservation, restoring indigenous gardening practices and the use of native medicinal plants for healthy diets. Cultural lifeway programs include storytelling, drum making, basket weaving, bow and arrow making.
Instructors: Larry Littlebird (Laguna/Santo Domingo Pueblo) and Samuel Suina Ph.D, (Cochiti Pueblo)
The Drum Making - Language Camp was made possible through grants from The McCune Charitable Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico and The Riverside Church Sharing Fund, New York, NY.
PEREGRINA WALKABOUT -- VISION TO THE SEEKER
Date: Saturday, October 4 - Sunday, October 5, 2008
Cost: $340 (includes meals). Deposit: $100
Requires good physical health and moderate fitness level
Description:
“Following the purchase of Hamaatsa, I set out walking around the 320 acre boundary of Hamaatsa for a time of blessing and vision. The name peregrina came to me during my walkabout upon these ancestral lands of my Pueblo people. Peregrina was my Santo Domingo grandmother’s name coming from the word peregrination, which means: traveling about on foot. I am inspired to offer this listening-visioning experience to leaders who are seeking personal vision for spiritual fulfillment, and a common vision for creating a sustainable and socially just world.” – Larry Littlebird.
If you don’t think you have enough meaningful time in your daily life, then this is for you! Walking lightly upon the lands of Hamaatsa in the pinon and juniper foothills of the Ortiz Mountains, participants will be guided by Larry Littlebird through their own “peregrina”. This two day, overnight pilgrimage will be devoted to native ways of knowing including listening, intuitive sensing, personal quest of spirit, clear seeing, acceptance and faith building. We will camp overnight under the stars in a wilderness area of the 320 acre land base. Healthy vegetarian meals are provided by Hamaatsa and a light fast is also part of the program.
The program will culminate with council in the Hamaatsa Council Lodge Tipi. The process of council is integral to the seeker’s vision and asks that each person show up fully and trust in the wisdom of the whole.
HAADTSI: UPON THIS LAND -- Work Retreats
Dates: (offered at two different times)
1. Summer Work Retreat: Sunday, August 24 - Friday, August 29
2. Fall Work Retreat: Sunday, September 21 - Friday, September 26
Cost: $200 plus 25 hours in service. Deposit: $50
Work projects are the work that is taking place at Hamaatsa during the time of your retreat.
Requires good physical health and moderate to strong fitness level.
Description:
Be of service to Hamaatsa’s indigenous learning continuum, while learning and working on 320 acres of environmentally protected, aboriginal lands. Hands-on work projects include adobe making, road and trail maintenance, rock gathering for walls and structures, arbor construction, land conservation and watershed restoration. Experience living simply in a traditional native encampment as you take part in the daily spiritual and cultural practices at Hamaatsa. Daily activities include indigenous community precepts, sunrise prayer, land walkabouts, council, sweat lodge, and campfire storytelling evenings. We will also prepare a Pueblo Indian community style meal together. Please bring your own tent, camping gear, ice chest and food.
WAPITI ENCAMPMENT
Dates: October 23 – 26, 2008.
Cost: $680 (includes meals and rustic lodging).
Requires good physical health and moderate fitness level
Recommended reading: Hunting Sacred, Everything Listens, by Larry Littlebird
Description:
How does a hunter become someone who turns knowledge into action and become one with his or her word? How can a people work together to bring sustenance back to their community? How can we shape and impact the direction of our world with our everyday choices and actions?
Pueblo Indian bow hunter and author of Hunting Sacred, Everything Listens, Larry Littlebird, offers a four-day native encampment experience. During this experiential learning intensive, participants will discover how to apply hunter/gatherer tribal wisdom principles that teach us ways to live simply and sustainably upon the land.
Practical Permaculture through the Lens of Indigenous Land Wisdom
A collaborative permaculture course with Scott Pittman and Larry Littlebird
June 26-28, 2009
Description:
Program Details:
Meals for all three days are included in your registration fee.
Lodging: The instructors strongly encourage all participants taking this course to camp at Hamaatsa for program continuity.
Group Size: Space is limited to 25 students. This course is expected to fill quickly. Please register early to reserve your space.
Location: The work will take palace on a 45-acre site within the pristine 320-acre property of HAMAATSA, located in the rolling foothills of the Ortiz Mountains, halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Refunds and Cancellations: If you should cancel before June 15, your tuition (less $100 non-refundable deposit) will be refunded. After the registration deadline of June 15, we do not issue tuition refunds unless the course is canceled by us.
What is Permaculture? The philosophy within permaculture is one of working with rather than against nature, and of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than premature and thoughtless action. Permaculture design techniques encourage land use which integrates principles of ecology and applies lessons from nature. It reaches us to create setting and construct ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and the resilience of natural ecosystems. In the spirit of sustainability, it also teaches us to allow natural and designed ecosystems to demonstrate their own evolutions.
This program provides an ideal land-based learning environment for students to experience real time permaculture applications infused with indigenous ecology and land wisdom. HAMAATSA, is an indigenous learning center being sustainably developed on 320 acres of environmentally protected aboriginal lands. Scott Pittman, director of the Permaculture Institute and Larry Littlebird (Laguna/Santo Domingo Pueblo), director of Hamaatsa, are collaborating to offer this 3-day, hands-on permaculture course which includes: understanding how to read the landscape for gardens, orchards and trees, soil preparation, planting for pollinators, southwest indigenous agricultural methods and how to track water runoff for water management and rainwater harvesting systems. Ancestral stories and indigenous precepts for living correctly and simply on the land will be shared, as well as understanding kinship relationships to the elements (fire, water, air, earth) and the role people, plants and wildlife have to the landscape. The program culminates in the Hamaatsa Council Lodge (tipi) with a talking circle around the topic: "How to create sustainability and self sufficiency."
Water begins our life connection and nurtures our relationship to all that is. Join us for one whole day, away from your cell phone and computer. Under the cloud building summer sky at Hamaatsa, reconnect to the land and deepen your relationship to water. Discover the character of water and it’s essence to sustain all life.
Our day together includes meditative land-based work creating different types of rock water catchments for collecting rain – some for spiritual blessing and others for directing the flow of water to nurture the plants in our young food forest.
This experiential intensive, guided by Larry Littlebird, is part of Cultivating the Sacred at Hamaatsa, a spiritual action for learning to live simply, informed by an indigenous ecology and modeled upon the successful hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies of tribal America.
“For most Native people, the action has always been to simplify your life
so your spirit can teach you how to live.”
2009 Program Archive
Real-time, hands on sustainable building program at Hamaatsa!
TRADITIONALLIMESTUCCOTRAINING SEMINAR
October 1-4, 2009
8 am - 4 pm, each day
Tuition:$400 (includes materials)
In the past decade, many builders have taken another look at lime as a building material. Lime has been used for millennia, but in the 1880s it was replaced by Portland cement as the main binding material in construction. When installed properly, lime stuccos can last for hundreds of years and require little or no maintenance. To ensure proper placement and protection of lime stucco, applicators should attend a training seminar to understand the material and how it works. This hands-on training seminar is designed to expand your knowledge of what it takes to successfully install lime stucco.
Lime Stucco features:Substrates to adobe, plaster, strawbale, OSB, ICF; Carbon Neutral; Absorbs CO2; 100% Natural, Non-toxic and no VOCs; Low Thermal Conductivity; Breathable; Mold Resistance
Topics include:Sand gradation and particle size and how they can affect stucco strength; what a Balance Mix is; and mixing and applying lime stucco and colored limewash.
Where:This four-day seminar will take place at HAMAATSA, indigenous learning center. We will be plastering, in real-time, a small traditional adobe house that has just been completed. HAMAATSA is located on 320 acres of pristine aboriginal lands, halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, east off Interstate 25 (Santo Domingo Pueblo exit) and 5 miles on Hwy 22, heading toward Madrid.
Instructor:Tim White. Traditional Building Models and Systems, LLC
Who should attend? Professional stucco applicators, project managers, architects, homebuilders, and anyone desiring to learn about healthy, green sustainable building techniques.
1. Summer Work Retreat: Sunday, August 24 - Friday, August 29
