Tribal Wisdom Academy

About this program

Tribal Wisdom Academy offers summer day camps on a 20-acre private forest estate in the Los Gatos Mountains of California. Founded by Ben Jamin Walker, whose half-century of global wilderness expeditions and work with tribal families worldwide informs the program's philosophy, the academy describes itself as "historic analog childhood" - a return to traditional outdoor childhood experiences before the digital age. The program's mission centers on growing authentic social-emotional intelligence and teaching traditional life skills to prepare children for an uncertain future. With the slogan "Preparing kids for any world future," the academy emphasizes natural human intelligence development through hands-on making, outdoor adventure, and authentic social interaction. The treehouse village experience on the forest campus creates what they call "organic human childhood, in the woods where it all began," offering a unique alternative to screen-based learning and providing what families might once have called a "traditional summer childhood."