Back to Earth Guides
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Who Taught and Trained Us
Youth Speaks
Back to Earth founder Eli Marienthal was a competitive slam poet with Youth Speaks as a young man. Youth Speaks runs poetry and creative writing workshops around the Bay Area. Eli credits his mentors at Youth Speaks and his experience on the YS national team with helping him find his voice and navigate adolescence.youthspeaks.org
NOLS
Back to Earth co-founders Jesse Sachs and Eli Marienthal have both completed training courses with NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School). NOLS is a leader in outdoor education internationally.
Jesse and completed his first month-long NOLS course in high school. The confidence and experience he gained through that expedition allowed Jesse to take Eli backpacking when they were teenagers. Jesse also completed a semester-long course in backpacking, mountaineering and canoeing, as well as an outdoor educator course in mountaineering with NOLS when he was in college.
Back to Earth draws on the core wilderness competencies and risk-management philosophies of NOLS, and Back to Earth guides are certified as Wilderness First Responders through NOLS Wilderness Medicine.
nols.edu
The Tracking Project
The founders of Back to Earth owe particular gratitude to John Stokes of The Tracking Project. Eli Marienthal completed seven years of mentor training with John Stokes. The core of that training was the Haudenoshaunee Thanksgiving Address, a beautiful piece of ritual technology for greeting and thanking the web of life. Some years ago, Haudenosaunee elders asked that the Thanksgiving Address be shared out to bring some peace to the world. We carry the mandate to lift up the Thanksgiving Address. We teach it to all of our participants and encourage them to utilize it to activate their relationships with the natural world and to access their gratitude for the life on this planet.thetrackingproject.org
Ren Xue
The founders of Back to Earth have studied and practiced life cultivation and qigong under the Ren Xue system. Jesse Sachs is a certified level 5 teacher of Ren Xue and practitioner of Yuan Ming Medicine. The teachings of Yuan Tze, Ren Xue's founder, and the practice of qigong have given us potent tools to cultivate our wellbeing and address the unhealthy patterns of modern life. We share these tools with our participants when appropriate.renxueinternational.org
Medicine Path NAC
The founders of Back to Earth were mentored by George Bertelstein, the spiritual leader of Medicine Path NAC in Berkeley, CA. His instruction and support have been critical to the blossoming of W.I.L.D. over the years.
medicinepath.org
Land Acknowledgements
The founders of Back to Earth grew up, and now live, work, and own property on unneeded lands of the Oholone people in the East San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas on the ancestral lands of the Maidu and Nisenan peoples. We honor the ancestors who tended these lands and waters, and are grateful for opportunities to know, pray with, and support native life in California in a variety of ways
Ohlone Territory
The founders of Back to Earth grew up and now live, own property and work on unceded Ohlone territory in the ancestral lands of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, now known as Oakland and Berkeley. We honor the ancestors who tended those lands and waters, and we support their descendants through paying Shuumi Land Tax.
We recognize that we have inadvertently benefitted from the genocide waged against the Ohlone people and the theft and continued occupation of this land.
We believe that philanthropic and other institutions, as stewards of wealth that has been accumulated through the extraction of Indigenous lands and the exploitation of communities of color, have a particular responsibility to contribute to the healing of the lands they occupy and to enter into a restorative relationship with their local Indigenous communities.
We pay the Shuumi land tax to support justice for indigenous people.
https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/pay-the-shuumi-land-tax/
Southern Sierra Miwuk Territory
It is a blessing for us to be able to guide trips in Yosemite National Park. We acknowledge that Yosemite and all public lands in the Sierras are on unceded native land. We name the legacy of genocide in the settling of California, and give gratitude to the ancestors of the Southern Sierra Miwuk people in particular as they tended much of what is now called Yosemite. We support the Southern Sierra Miwuk with an annual donation to help with wildfire recovery and the struggle for federal recognition.
southernsierramiwuknation.org
Pata Panaka Village
Back to Earth has run programs in the ancestral lands of the Nisenan and Maidu people, what is now called Nevada City. We have also had the good luck of knowing and working with Tsi'akim Maidu Chairman Don Ryberg at Pata Panaka, an ancient village site that is being re-awakened. We are grateful to have a relationship with Don Ryberg and his family and community, and have had the privilege of introducing him to Back to Earth participants.
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