In response to your announcement, I disagree with you on your hypothesis that: "There's an audience for gathering to practice and share stone-age/primitive/indigenous skills. We see Quail Springs (a permaculture farm) offering workshops that fit in this category--and there seem to be many for whom gathering to practice stone-age skills and awareness is easier to get excited about than permaculture.

Partly this may be because the stone-age skills are portable while permaculture design is more meaningful when one has long-term control over some land.."  Firstly, origin skills are not dead in the "stone age" yet live on today through many peoples and traditions because they have developed over thousands of years of people's relationship with the land.  When you relegate it to the past you demean its spark of life that still feeds the world.  Most people in times where they were intact with the land had very definitive caretaking roles with the wild lands that more often than not crossed over into cultivation of the forests for better hunting and foraging.  This is where Permaculture draws much of its foundational root.  

Being able to move was generally relegated to the young person needing to find who they were and where they are by defining those things outside of themselves to better be able to see the substance of who they are inside.  When you look at the land, whether a hunter, planter, or casual observer....you are exerting a form of "control" over the land especially if you are working from ego rather than from divination. There was usually part of the tribe that was nomadic (ranging from one traditional hunting ground to another) and another that was sedentary cultivators and gatherers.  In either case, there were long-term relationships with the same lands or as I hear it from you, "control," that allowed for enhancements to human and non-human life.  It is well documented that land that is being care-taken by humans in a stewardship effort can be more vital in diversity, resilience and stability than lands without human intervention.  This leads me to believe that humans have a purpose here on earth and it is wrapped into our ability as stewards of the lands through long term relationships. 

I hope you are well and wrapped in the learning journey of life.

Blessings,

Warren

Warren Brush

Co-Founder

Quail Springs Learning Oasis

Trees for Children

Mentoring for Peace

P.O. Box 417

New Cuyama, CA  93254

805.886.7239 - Quail Springs

805.715.0607 - Trees for Children

Fax 866.321.1102

www.quailsprings.org

www.treesforchildren.org

www.mentoring4peace.com

"May culture spring to life as we learn together how to know all that sustains us and to honor those things deeply"