Ancestral Knowledge is group of earth skills specialists who live locally, here in Maryland. As you will read below, our core group draws from a wide variety of backgrounds – from skateboarder to scientist and engineer to environmentalist! In addition, Ancestral Knowledge brings in guest instructors from far and wide to teach their own area of specialized knowledge.
Bill Kaczor – Co-Founder/ CEO 2007-Present
Bill is the CEO and founder of Ancestral Knowledge. Bill has worked and studied intensively with the masters in the fields of; youth mentoring, naturalist studies, primitive technology and tracking. He has been teaching children and adults in these subjects since 1998 — For five years Bill worked as head instructor Children of the Earth Foundations- Coyote Tracks summer camps, and two years as the assistant director. He has instructed students at the University of Maryland, Georgetown University, Rivercane Rendezvous, Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Gathering (MAPS Meet), Bill has instructed for 5 years at Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School teaching primitive traps, bow making, flint knapping, pottery and hide tanning. In 1999, Bill chose to leave his skateboard/snowboard business and dedicate his life to teaching these skills. Shortly afterward, Bill designed and was granted an after school and summer program for the 21st Century Learning Community in Public School District 150 in Peoria, Illinois. This program was successful in that it led the children to a respect for nature, respect for themselves and others, self-discipline and adventure. Bill is a specialist in bow making, stone tool technologies, hide tanning, fire by friction and hunting.
Read what Tom Brown Jr said about Bill
Chelsea Spitzer-Field Instructor
Chelsea grew up in Baltimore County, where the small patch of protected forest behind her home served as both a playground and classroom, fostering in her a deep sense of curiosity, wonder, and respect for the natural world. On family camping trips, she could often be found in the early morning by the fire ring, awake before anyone else and nursing to flame a buried coal with dry grass and sticks.
She began her work as an outdoor educator as president and trip leader for the hiking and camping club at Goucher College, where she received a Bachelor degree in Psychology. She was drawn to study how spending time in nature improves mental health and wellbeing. In her spare time, she began bringing groups of people without much outdoor experience to explore trails and rocks and waterways, while sharing her knowledge and excitement about the beautiful, intricate ecological system we are all a part of.
Along her journey, she realized her love of working with children, and after college, she started her own after school nature program with a small group of children from Roland Park Elementary in Baltimore. They often explored a local park, splashing in the stream and finding plenty of plants, bugs and insects to keep them busily flipping through guidebooks. From there, she began working with the Waldorf School of Baltimore’s Forest Aftercare Program. While there, she practiced an approach that integrated the styles of both Rudolf Steiner and Jon Young to create daily nature connection experiences for kindergarten and elementary students.
Chelsea is always excited to learn new things by observing the world around her; she finds wild edible and medicinal plants endlessly interesting, and loves to work with cordage and primitive crafting techniques.
Mike- Field Instructor
Mike grew up camping, hiking and backpacking in the mid-atlantic region with his family and friends. As a child, he remembers sneaking through the undergrowth of the forest after dark with a fern crown, hiding and trying to blend in with the forest around him to surprise his friends.
He has spent most of his life in the Baltimore region where he calls home. He has been inspired in recent years by the knowledge that nature can be found anywhere. Mike’s journey to a deeper connection with nature began in 2012 at the Spruce Knob Mountain Center, where he learned a few of the survival and awareness skills that we teach at Ancestral Knowledge. The experiences and inspiration gained from the people there stoked his curiosity and propelled his desire to learn more. He continued this journey by completing an intensive adult class at the Living Earth School in Charlottesville , VA in 2018.
He believes firmly in cultivating a relationship with the surrounding environment in which we live, and learning about the connections between various living beings and ourselves. By learning respect, gratitude, and consent with all living beings we can bring ourselves back to a reciprocal relationship with the Earth and each other.
Mike has a passion for wild edible plants, gardening, herbal medicine, nature-based navigation, carving, survival, cross country skiing, and fire making. He looks forward to providing opportunities to share his knowledge with people from all sorts of background in a variety of circumstances
James “Gator” Johnson – Field Instructor
Gator is an enthusiastic skater who has been skating for 5 years. His love for adventure and travel has taken him to many skate parks around the country .
He was a local union ironworker which makes him no stranger to working outdoors. Family bonding is how he chooses to spend his spare time, and even then it’ll probably be at a skate park. Being an Uncle of many has made him somewhat adept with interacting with kids. Prior to full time work, James studied at AACC for business administration and earned credits through his ironworking apprenticeship classes.
Before work, school, and even skating James’s upbringing was based in music. In his adolescent years he played drums in school marching bands and for local churches. He’s eager to skate, travel, and mentor kids while contributing to some of their most unforgettable summer memories.
Eden Cornelius – Field Instructor
Growing up homeschooled, Eden first found the primitive skills community in upstate NY through enrollment in a program called Primitive Pursuits at age seven. From that time until her teen years, she participated in programs through a number of organizations and attended primitive skills gatherings. In her teens, her time was spent hiking, camping, backpacking, cross-country skiing, and filling her journal with detailed sketches and facts about the wildlife around her.
All of her free time was spent outdoors, building debris huts, making cordage, and adventuring in the forest. Schooled by her fiber artist and aspiring naturalist mother, her love of the natural world was fueled by a rich curriculum with a focus on hands-on learning and her intense interest in insects and plants.
Now, Eden is a multimedia artist and painter who continues to share and learn skills, with a particular passion for pottery, wet felting techniques, needle felting, and natural pigments. With a background in youth leadership, she enjoys working with groups and fostering a creative connection with the earth.
Ravo Brown – Field Instructor
Ravo Brown has been skating for 4 years. He was drawn to skateboarding from the very first push! When he realized how inclusive and supportive the local skate scene was, he began to explore all the terrain from skate parks to vert ramps and backyard pools. He finds inspiration in the individual creativity that each skater brings to the session. Ravo has skated many of the local parks in the DMV area but his true love is finding and skating backyard pools.
Ravo has always been an athletic person participating in gymnastics, boxing, lacrosse, and basketball. As the oldest brother of 4 he has great kid skills and a positive attitude toward life and having fun!
When Ravo isn’t skating he enjoys doing his own car repairs and currently works in his uncle’s auto shop in Waldorf MD. He is a talented musician of 12 years playing a multitude of string and percussion instruments and enjoys composing hip instrumental tracks using fruity loops. We are stoked to have Ravo on board!
Sara Henry – Field Instructor
Sara learned how to make baskets in 2011 from Nancy Basket, and she’s been hooked ever since. Each time she saw Nancy at a gathering afterward, she would show her the new baskets she had made and Nancy would critique them, giving her tough love advice on how she could improve. It was a big day for Sara when, while she was assisting Nancy in teaching at the Firefly Gathering intensives, she showed Nancy a basket and the feedback she received was a firm “good.” She has been teaching several styles of basketry for over two years at gatherings across the southeast. She is passionate about empowering students to go out into the forest and experiment with what they find in their own bioregions. So much beautiful and functional art can be created if we open up and play with the natural materials all around us!
Ancestral Knowledge instructors are First Aid / CPR certified, have completed CJIS Criminal Background Checks, and have been checked against the National Sex Offenders Registry