Hi, I’m Snow Bear!

Senior Mentor

Steven Snow Bear Taylor has been an environmental educator and practitioner and teacher of primitive living skills for 40 years. From pre-schoolers to Elder Hostel participants, many have joined him on interpretive naturalist walks and for living history programs and music and storytelling performances. He is recognized for his study and work in identifying and cataloguing the indigenous uses of edible, medicinal and utilitarian wild plants of the Southern Appalachians and knowledge of North American tribal peoples. Among his mentors have been elders of the Cherokee, Seminole, Creek and Lakota. He has been a woodcarver and woodworker for 25 years and enjoys foraging for wild foods and medicines, animal husbandry, beekeeping, horseback riding, whitewater canoeing, gourd and bamboo craft (especially making indigenous rhythm instruments), making fire by friction, primitive fiber arts, tracking skills, and ancient ways of open fire cookery.

A student of West African drumming, he was taught by the Yoruba master Babatunde Olatunji. He continues to teach this music to children and adults. He is a founding member and lead percussionist with the Grammy-nominated musical ensemble Sapien, playing whole world music at schools, festivals and museums throughout the southeast. He was a founding member of the performance group Sapien Dreamtime that entertained students while teaching the music, dance and stories of indigenous cultures from around the world. Snow Bear has brought his music and skills to the Maya of the Yucatan and the N’debe and Zulu people of South Africa as well as youth on the islands of St. Croix and St. Lucia. He is an outdoor educator who has shared his skills with young and old alike at many camps, schools and museums for over three decades. He has worked with a variety of special populations, including youth at risk, adjudicated youth, mental health referrals and young men in drug rehabilitation programs.

Twenty eight years ago, he co-founded Earthskills Rendezvous, Inc. which provides educational events in ancestral living skills for people of all ages. He continues to host, instruct and serve on the Board of Directors for these events. He was a senior counselor for Georgia Mental Health Institute’s Outdoor Therapeutic Program for 8 years. He has also been director and instructor of The Peaceful Warrior Walkabout of EARTH Camps, Inc., (a 14 day primitive living skills intensive for high school students), program director of Pepperland Farm Camp for 17 years and served on the EARTH Camp Board of Directors.

Snow Bear’s life reflects his devotion to service, the well-being of our youth and reverence for the elders and ancestral understandings of many cultures.

Snowbear has been on GRP staff for about 20 years.