Indigenous Ability

[Consider this Part 2 of the offering Move Like a Scout or Indigenous Warrior . You can consume this piece in isolation but to really follow the arc I’d recommend reading the mentioned piece [or even re-reading it] to gather fully where we’re going.] Many of us tout our bona fides as high-speed, low-drag, can-the-noize-boys cuz’ I’m lock ‘n’load from bang to go! It’s a fun little play-acting symptom we see in grown-ass adults who wear the gear, talk the talk, but…do they walk the walk? Before you answer, I’m going to drill down so we get mighty specific with that question of walking the walk. I have zero doubt that there is a squared away cadre that walks a walk some of the time. I wager there is a smaller contingent [not anyone you likely see on the street in the day-to-day] who walk the walk more often than not. I refer to those folks in war-zones, battle-zones, boots-on-the-ground, no time for drill cuz’ this shit’s real. Environment shapes behavio...

[The following is extracted from our upcoming volume Move Like a Warrior: Recapturing Indigenous Movement .] Spend any time reading accounts of early contact between “civilized” folk and indigenous peoples, or those “civilized” ones who had “gone Injun’” such as early frontiersmen, scouts, the Coureur De Bois [“Runners of the Woods” or “woods runners”] of the North Woods and you find some commonalities. There is in many an admiration for the strength and grace of body and freedom of spirit. There are also more than a few disdainful accounts that still offer begrudging regard for “ stout and sturdy frames ” that “ can run like a deer ” or “ disappear into [the desert/mountain/forest] like the very wind itself.” Undoubtedly, much of these remarked upon characteristics were part and parcel of time, time spent in these very environments and gradually learning that to be a good hunter, one needed stealth and stamina to eat. One needed a general natural cultivated facile ...

This is Lieutenant-General John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne on the rabble that was encountered during the American Revolution. “It is not to be expected that the rebel Americans will risk a general combat or a pitched battle, or even stand at all, except behind intrenchments as at Boston. Accustomed to felling of timber and to grubbing up trees, they are very ready at earthworks and palisading, and will cover and intrench themselves wherever they are for a short time left unmolested with surprising alacrity…Composed as the American army is, together with the strength of the country, full of woods, swamps, stone walls, and other inclosures and hiding places, it may be said of it that every private man will in action be his own general, who will turn every tree and bush into a kind of temporary fortress, and from whence, he has fired his shot with all deliberation, coolness, and uncertainty which hidden safety inspires, he will skip as it were to the next, and so on for a long ...

[See our blog entry “ Walk like a Warrior ” for historical instances of the topic. Our focus here is the mechanics of the indigenous warrior strides and their uses in modern life.] The human stride has its idiosyncrasies [in general to the species and in particular to the individual.] Modern/ “civilized” humans have developed a plantigrade stride, that is, planting heel first then rolling to the toe. It is surmised that both footwear and prepared surfaces [flat-ground everywhere] fostered this switch from ball-of-the-foot or flat-foot strides commonly used by those who develop strides on sand, gravel, rocks, trails and other natural terrain. Our world is one of walking-surface regularity, even our elevated steps [stairs and terraced environments] have an engineered homogeneity to them. And this every-day-of-our-lives regularity has grooved a pattern in us. We have come to be “ step-expectant ,” that is, to assume that our next foot placement will be quite similar,...