Tom Brown Jr and "Stalking Wolf"

[educatedindian]

A Nuage cop in Sweden talked his bosses into paying for him to go to Brown´s Tracking School and seems determined to embarass himself in public by defending Brown and attacking me in an article for the police newsletter. So...the evidence against Brown.

Brown claims to have been taught by "Stalking Wolf" an Apache who livedin Mexico and taught him when he was 17, conveniently dying with no evidence of himever having lived and designating Brown as his successor, initiating him in "numerous vision quests".

Porblem is, Stalking Wolf is not an Apache name, Apaches dont have a vision quest (there is a ceremony for young boys but its not called that) , and why would Brown go on "numerous" ones when a quest is a once in your life thing?

Brown´s real teachers came forward.
http://www.trackertrail.com/tombrown/controversies/fraud.html

More problems with his claims
http://www.trackertrail.com/tombrown/controversies/
http://www.trackertrail.com/publications/inthenews/newjerseymonthly1987.html

And  a lot of his writing (actually ghost writing since sci fi authors wrote it forhim) is a pretty obvious rip off of the Book of Revelations.
http://wovoca.com/prophecy-stalking-wolf.htm

[Guest]

Hello, can anyone here tell me about the "authenticity" of these two people?  I have included some info snippets and links.  TY

Tom Brown, Jr. is America's premier outdoorsman, renown tracker, teacher, and author. Starting when he was only seven, Tom was taught by Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman, and scout. For ten years Tom was mentored in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and awareness. After Stalking Wolf's death, when Brown was 17, Tom spent the next ten years living in the wilderness throughout the United States with no manufactured tools - in most instances not even a knife - perfecting these skills and teachings. Brown came back to "civilization" looking for people interested in all that he had learned. He felt lost and confused until a local sheriff who knew Tom called him in to track a lost person. Tom found the missing person and in the process, found his path in life.

Tom has authored 16 books on the wilderness including, The Tracker, The Way of the Scout,

https://www.trackerschool.com/TDBJ.cfm


Stalking Wolf was raised free of the reservations in the mountains of northern Mexico. Born in the 1870's during a time of great warfare and violence, he was part of a band of Lipan Apache that never surrendered. He was taught the traditional ways of his people and excelled as a healer and a scout. When he was twenty, a vision sent him away from his people, and for the next sixty-three years he wandered the Americas seeking teachers, and learning the old ways of many native peoples. Stalking Wolf traveled the height and breadth of the Americas, living on his own as a free man. He never held a job, drove a car, paid taxes, or participated in modern society. When he was eighty-three years old, he encountered a small boy gathering fossils in a stream bed. He recognized that boy as the person he would spend his final years with, teaching him all that he knew. That boy was Tom Brown, Jr. Tom became the recipient of not only all that Stalking Wolf had learned during his travels, but the distillation of hundreds of years of Apache culture as well. These teachings are what Tom teaches at his famous Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School.

related? links....
https://www.trackerschool.com/StalkingWolf.cfm

http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/rhea2.htm

http://livingnow.com.au/spirit/s1spiritstories3.htm

http://www.kstrom.net/isk/books/adult/ad530.html

Not sure if this is related or not:
Michael Stalking Wolf's WolfDancer Creations

http://www.wolfdancer.net/

[educatedindian]

http://newagefraud.org/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?board=frauds;action=display;num=1119076813

Where to begin? His tracking ability is greatly overrated, as many of his own former students found out the hard way. His most famous alleged success was actually a huge failure, with him facing a lawsuit. He learned from whites playing at being primitive, not Natives. Nothing he describes comes anywhere close to being a truthful picture of Apaches. And above all...

...Tom Brown's writing was just so loaded with racist stereotypes I wondered how anyone could take him seriously. Except for those so unaware of the racism they'd been fed they start to see it as normal. All of his equating white=civilized, white=modern, Indian=primitive, Indian=uncivilized is so in-your-face racist.

To be fair though, most of his books were ghost written, so he shares the blame.

Michael Stalking Wolf is Lakota, BTW. Don't see anything of his related to Brown's claims.

[Guest]

"Michael Stalking Wolf is Lakota, BTW. Don't see anything of his related to Brown's claims."

Oops, my mistake, Sorry

[NanticokePiney]

  There is a series of  outdoor books written by a Quaker named Ernest Thompson Seton between 1910 and 1920. Tom Browns writings and knowledge come directly from these books.
  Stalking Wolf and his grandson Rick were proven to have never existed by a Alibamu-Kosati writer and researcher for NAIDV named Sondra Ball.


  Peace- Rich Joseph

[educatedindian]

Could you tell us what you went through, how you met him, what tipped you off he was fake, etc? Firsthand accounts are very valuable.

[steve2]

I've attended three classes with Brown myself: the Standard, Philosophy 1 and the Advanced  Tracking and Nature Awareness. I no longer believe that Brown is authentic because of some of the things I saw at these classes. I need to know how Sondra Ball was able to disprove the existence of Stalking Wolf and Rick.

[educatedindian]

This book critiques Brown's claims, though done from a humorous angle.
http://www.amazon.com/Fraud-Essays-David-Rakoff/dp/0767906314#

RationalWiki's article
---------------------
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Tom_Brown,_Jr.
Tom Brown, Jr. is the author of a number of fiction books with titles like The Tracker, The Vision, The Way of the Scout, and The Quest, that oddly are found in the non-fiction or autobiography sections. In these books, he tells of how as a boy in New Jersey, he and a childhood friend "Rick" (whom nobody can seem to locate to corroborate the story) were approached by an old Apache tracker named Stalking Wolf who took them under his wing as his apprentices and taught them wilderness tracking, along with loads of supernatural woo such as how to make themselves invisible, walk through walls, kill deer using their bare hands while falling out of a tree, go on shamanic journeys, permanently frostbite-proof themselves by taking a hike, change shape, spend a summer living naked in the forest foraging plants for survival, magically escape from a pack of wild dogs who think they are wolves, trick their parents into thinking they were at home doing homework when in fact they were spending weeks at a time in the New Jersey pine barrens being taught by an Apache tracker, and too much else to list here.

The story is simply too implausible to take seriously, yet it is marketed as non-fiction and is popular especially in New Age bookstores, where people desparately want to believe in tripe like this.

Some obvious questions come to mind immediately: An Apache tracker just picks two boys out of the blue - in New Jersey of all places - to become his apprentices? How did these boys manage to spend to much time running around in the woods without their parents noticing?

The story bears more than a casual resemblance to the 1903 childrens novel Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton (who was largely responsible for all the pseudo-Indian woo in the Boy Scouts of America), and to Boy Scout pseudo-Indian woo in general, making it possible that Brown read and was inspired by Seton's book, which is about two boys who go into the woods to "live as Indians" for a while, learning woodcraft, tracking, and other woods skills. Brown's story is also a classic childhood "apprenticeship" fantasy to which lonely, nerdy, and shy boys are especially prone, in which the lonely misunderstood boy fantasizes about being taken under the tutelage of a usually wizardly "Gandalf"-type adult who is an expert at some arcane, often super-human skill. Under the influence of Ernest Thompson Seton's book it is not hard to speculate how such a fantasy can develop around a Native American tracker. One may speculate further that such a fantasy, once elaborately constructed, could be believed by the child and writing about it as an adult as if it actually happened could become the basis of a lucrative career as a "tracking" expert.

Speculation aside, Tom Brown Jr. does run a tracking school and is a recognized go-to person in the field of tracking (although even there, he makes some claims that are not widely accepted among other trackers, such as claiming to be able to detect if a person is ill from their tracks). He is likely self-taught. Look, if you want to believe the silly Indian apprenticeship fantasies, you are more than welcome to, but the whole thing smells a little too much like Mike Warnke's "Satanism" tall tales.

Brown's tracking school has been the subject of a Penn and Teller Bullshit! investigation as part of an episode covering survivalism and doomsday scenarios.

-------------------

The most relevant posts from a survivalist discussion board describes the lies and cultism of his tracker school.
---------------------
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=34860
SuvivalDude  

I am surprised that he is jsut putting his name on other peoples work like he is. He seems to be simply tagging his name on the efforts of others at this point. Other than his religion/"PHILOSOPHY" courses. LOL
He should be on the list for militia extremist watch list.
He pushes his "PHILOSOPHY" under the guise of Survival Tracker Teachings of the Bushcraft. I find this disgusting.
I will never attend another course.
 
Wilderness Survival Tracking Bushcraft disguising HIS Philosophy to his unsuspecting students. lol
They are under the belief they are there to learn a skill set, Which they do, but are also indoctrinated with the cult like beliefs and philosophy of Brown.
Some guys and gals really get sucked into this.
Sounds like a Dave Koresh beginnings.


Swamp Shuck  

I went to a few of Brown's training and I have to admit he became crazier as he became older. Most people are aware that Tom Brown made up most of his bio but then that is not unusual for wilderness type people, they are constantly reinventing themselves. His tracking skills, which at one time were excellent, seem to have faded as he spends more and more time talking in fantasy than he does in actual reality. Brown was the first person I took a formal outdoor education class from. I thought I learned alot. Now I would say do Elpel or Hood before you took any of TB's classes.

I wouldn't mind the religious context of his classes if they help a little substance. I put up with others trying to force their religious beliefs on me all the time. His classes just have less and less skills being taught and more and more new age ideas being thrown around. Not for me anymore.

BLT


SuvivalDude  

Well said. couldn't agree more. It seems to be becoming more and more Cult Like than a school. You can definitely see a division among students who are looking for content vs. the groupies that are sold on the New Age ideology.
No wonder he lost his training contract with the Military. Seems he lost the Search and Rescue stuff as well according to his excuse for getting rid of the HUMMERS. Sounds like he is in financial trouble tho with Karl telling the Instructors that TRACKER is broke and doesn't have the money to pay them.
Maybe he can't afford them any longer. Attendance seems to have declined according to some of the guys. Perhaps his ego has outgrown his pocket book?


Leif the Lucky  

Royal you need to read one of his "biographical" books. When you read them remind yourself that Tom is telling stories of incredible detail about a man named grandfather who of which there is no proof he ever existed. Not to mention the level of detail he sites from when he was 7 to 10 or so years old. It is a load of horseshlt.

From his original story of Grandfather to his new one he changes his entire meeting with Grandfather from one that is normal to one that is now mythical and epic.

He meets him from his friend Rick. Now the new story is that he and grandfather saw each other in a vision through "talking stones" years before they met.(I shlt you not)

Tom then blames editors for messing up the story haha. It is nothing more than snowballing his own legend as he became more popular.

That is just a tiny example of the bullshlt in his books.


 Swamp Shuck  

First, let me say that I don't mind his religious view if he wants to keep it himself. What I didn't like was when he starteds turning his "Practicals" or his nuts and bolts classes into religious teachings. If I was paying to go to his religious classes then I would have no problem with it but the Practicals should contain more skills training and less religion as they did back in the 70s and 80s.

He has a very strong End Of The World belief right now. He has been given visions that tell him that soon only those with strong wilderness survival skills will survive the coming changes to the end of the world. His "Brownies" or groupies are preparing for the coming changes. We have to be of his religion, meaning we have to be able to take information from him when Grandfather, long dead, contacts TB and tells him about the coming changes.

He believes that those who learn tracking well can track an animal without ever leaving their couch. Track an animal (or human) with their mind. To get this in depth though you need to pay for ALL of his tracking classes starting with the Practicals. By the end of these classes you have paid out 6 or 7 thousand dollars. Brownies swear that it works but others complain because they have been taken. TB says that those who complain just didn't put enough work into their classes and it's not his fault.

The big thing that really stopped me from being a fan though was the Hummers. Here is a man that basically calls all people besides himself horrible because they can't live close to the land and they are busy destroying the earth. Then he has a fleet of Hummers. If you take a class from him personally he will insult you many times. I was okay with it if he also was teaching me something. But don't tell me I am destroying the earth while you drive around in your fleet of Hummers. I don't mind Hummers but don't drive one and then pretend to be the best envornmentalist ever. I'm not going to believe it.

If you take a class from many of his students you can end up hating wilderness survival skills. I took one class from one of his students who kept trying to hide from us. When we saw him every time he got mad and threw a temper tantrum. "You're lying, you didn't see me." He said to me once. I said yes I did, but I thought you were peeing on that tree over there so I gave you some privacy and didn't look. I kept wondering why you didn't go further into the woods to pee, but I thought you were just being rude.

Then there was one tracking class I took from one of his students where this really nice man found wolf tracks and we were all excited to see them (this was years ago when there weren't a whole lot of wolves around). The teacher was so mad that he didn't find the tracks that he said that if the guy who found the tracks was so smart he could teach the class, and then walked off and left us. I have to admit, we had alot more fun after that.

There was another class where the female instructor was a TB teacher and she tried to talk us all into doing a Sun Dance. She called us names when we said we weren't going to. If we really wanted to become good at wilderness survival we needed to do a Sun Dance or we would never see the Great Spirit. I have heard similar things from TB though not with the Sun Dance but with other American Indian ceremonies. Again, I am not cutting these ceremonies down. I just am not American Indian and I don't want to worship the way they do. I don't think that will make me less of a tracker or survivor but TB seems to think so.

Of course, I see this often that we can not survive without following some one elses god. I have read it on this forum and not in the religious section. So I'm not saying that this is totally a TB thing. It's just that when you are pay 4 or 5 hundred dollars per class to learn the Practicals, religion should not be forced onto you. If it is there should at least be some skills taught too. TB's classes are becoming less and less about skills and more and more about his spirituality. They aren't worth the money any more.

In the states for general bushcraft I would go with Hood. For primitive skills I would go with Elpel. Thayer is my favorite for wild edible plants just because he has lived off of them for many years. Barlow is another favorite for wild edibles because she feeds her family of four (with two very picky kids) off of mainly wild edibles all year long.

If other people have other instructors that they like I would love to hear about them. My son and I always take a few wilderness skills classes a year all over the country. I'd love to try someone new.

BLT



rodale  

When i was attending his school the farther you went the more crazy it got. the guy is huge into black magik, sorcery, spirit conjuring, whatever you want to call it. He claims it is native american religion and good for living with the earth. He also uses spells and chants beliving they work too. Part of his basic philosophy is there is no such thing as right and wrong. Do I dare say there is a criminal element in that school? There is and mr. brown knows all about it. Im wondering how long until it all comes out, and who is he going to pin the blame on?


Brother Buck  

OMG!
Hi Tom....getting so desperate you need to cop alter egos and bomb a thread?
You guys gotta read this wackos thread on how he can track fish in the ocean based on the sound of waves hitting the hull of a boat.
It's a riot.

What I have heard about Brown:
Tom Brown has lost his friggin mind.
He learned what he initially learned about bushcraft from the Society of Primitive Technology in New Jersey.
He took classes there and is remembered by the instructors.
He's a huge fraud. There was no Stalking Wolf or a Rick.
No one but Tom and apparently his politician brother know or have ever seen Stinky Drunk or Rick.
He marketed himself and his school well.
He hired, initially anyway, very competent instructors from the university where HE LEARNED from their anthropology program that ran the Society.
Mind you much of that is hearsay but it's hearsay from numerous sources.
He writes conflicting accounts of the same incident(shot twice in the exact same spot in his back by two different people but has never been hospitalized for a severe gunshot wound).
Claims he hunted assassins for the government.......yup....another CIA agent I guess.
Says he tracked and defeated a bunch of UDT in some field exercise somewhere.
He can make himself invisible.

I know a dude who took one of his classes and walked out about 4 hours into it.
He said it was just wacky, Tom was supposed to be teaching it but the class was told he was off doing things for the government....last minute high security stuff.
The dooods a looon

[shadow]

Hello, I found this site by typing "Tom Brown Jr is a fraud" on my search engine, this was one of several sites that came up. I read your mission statement and several things and found it peeked my interest. I am not going to bash on Tom Brown, but want to post a link to some notes I found online that were taken by one of his philosophy students during his class. I would like people who DO know about native culture, philosophy and religions to make an HONEST judgement about them. I wonder how athentic his teachings are, I am not native, I do not know much about natives, but have always found the native lifestyle before european influence to be fasinating.

I recently attended Tom's standard class. I learned of him from 2 of his field guides and think they were athentic. At standard class Tom told many stories that were pushing the boundries of truthfulness. Spiritualism was attached to every skill we were taught, spiritualism was a huge part of the whole class. I don't mind learning new religions, if I like it I would start practicing it, but I got the impression that something wasnt right, it felt like going to the theater to watch a interesting play but at every intermission they were asking for donations. I did enjoy the class, made some friends and learned survival skills, something doesn't feel right thou.

This is the link http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TrackerSchool/message/60678

Tomorrow I'll post my notes from class, and a list of books that Tom recommended we read to help us learn. I want to know if he is athentic before I return for other classes.

[educatedindian]

There's nothing even remotely Indian in Brown's beliefs, other than his very unlikely story of having met an old Indian wise man who magically handed him "ancient Indian secrets." That's a story straight out of Boy Scouts fantasies.

I didn't see anything Indian at all in the philosophy described at that post. Brown even admitted it's his own philosophy.

And I don't see anything Indian at all at that group, just nature buffs, survivalists, altmedicine types, and a few scary nutjobs like the one who joked he's threatened to kill the president but can't get anyone to take him seriously.

[shadow]

here are a few of the books tom brown recommended we read to help build our awareness. I havent read any of them and know nothing about them, so i wont comment on them. Super learning. silva mind control method. transindental meditation. Dr herbert bensen's books. relaxation response. seeing with the minds eye. dynamic meditation. the 4th world. and his own awakening spirits.

After doing my own research on the guy, and looking back on my experience at his school, i no longer think he's athentic.

[NanticokePiney]

  Tom Brown's "The Tracker" is a rewrite of Ernest Thompson Seton's "Rolf in the Woods". His other books are a rehash and rearangement of all Seton's other books. Christ! In "The Tracker" his geography of the Pine Barrens is even wrong! 

[seeker108]

I'm coming into this thread pretty late so I don't know if I'll get any replies or not but here goes---
I don't really have a dog in this fight (so to speak) but there are a couple of things I noticed about this thread.
First of all, one of the main contentions seems to be that Brown doesn't offer any proof of the claims he makes of the existence of "Stalking Wolf" or "Rick" or of the "training" he claims to have received.
I can see how that would reduce his credibility.
Could you guys please provide some proof of a few of the claims that you make?
For example--

1. "I also witnessed brown himself hint at having connections with the mafia, and his cook jorge brana is a member of the mongols motorcycle gang."
I don't expect you to "prove" that Brown hinted at "mafia" connections--if you heard him do this, then I believe you-- but I do find it hard to believe that a member of the Mongols is a cook at a primitive skills school! Most of the Mongols, Hells Angels, Outlaws, etc. make their living off of drugs, prostitution, etc. Are there others who mow lawns for a living or serve burgers at McDonald's? (Sorry, I just couldn't resist--LOL!).

2. "Stalking Wolf and his grandson Rick were proven to have never existed by a Alibamu-Kosati writer and researcher for NAIDV named Sondra Ball."
I entered every search term I could think of and couldn't find any evidence of Sondra Ball addressing this topic at all. Could you direct me to this "proof"?

3. "When i was attending his school the farther you went the more crazy it got. the guy is huge into black magik, sorcery, spirit conjuring, whatever you want to call it."
While I was waiting to be approved for this forum (I'm a newbie) I read some excerpts from one of Brown's books, "Awakening Spirits". In the book, at least, he says that all "power" emanates from the "Creator" and that he's a Christian (at the point where he mistakenly thinks he's seeing Jesus Christ in a vision). Are you saying that when the students get to his school for classes he suddenly reveals that he's into black magic?

There are other examples from this thread that I could point out also-- but I'm really just trying to make a point. Brown may be a con man and his whole story may be a fabrication. but, if you're going to go after his unsubstantiated claims, you shouldn't be guilty of the same thing!! BTW-- I obviously don't mean to include the claims in the thread where links or other corroboration IS provided. Just the allegations that offer no substantiation!!!
Hope I don't step on too many toes!!

[critter - a white non-ndn person]

I read some excerpts from one of Brown's books, "Awakening Spirits". In the book, at least, he says that all "power" emanates from the "Creator" and that he's a Christian (at the point where he mistakenly thinks he's seeing Jesus Christ in a vision). Are you saying that when the students get to his school for classes he suddenly reveals that he's into black magic?

I don't know anything about Tom Brown or these wilderness schools.  But, I do know that most people into 'black magic' tend to keep that part private, shared only with the few who participate with them.  That is, if they are trying to appear as 'good' to the public.  Black magic is not necessarily sorcery or spirit conjuring. Sorcery and spirit conjuring can be used either way, just as anything can be.  Even money can be used for bad or good. 

[debbieredbear]

but I do find it hard to believe that a member of the Mongols is a cook at a primitive skills school! Most of the Mongols, Hells Angels, Outlaws, etc. make their living off of drugs, prostitution, etc.

You may find it hard to believe, but having known bikers from Hells ANgels included, they do ordinary things and work jobs on occasion. Sorry to ruin any preconcieved notions on your part. One of my friends, now an ex-biker, worked as an electition even while he was a biker.