There has been a great deal of controversy over Brown's true 'credentials.' The wilderness skills/survival community and the associated cottage industry is trying to share an allready limited market, with the inevitable personality clashes and attacks. I have mixed opinions about him. I attended his introductory course many years ago. My first outdoors mentor was also an Apache, except mine was a working cowboy in Arizona. I greeted Tom in the traditional Apache greeting when we met. The response is best described as the dull stare of a cow in pasture. Another student quite innocently challenged a statement on navigation based on simple mathematics. Tom flew into a rage, claiming the man insulted Grandfather's memory and kicked him out with a speedy refund. Still, I enjoyed the course and felt it worthwhile at the time. There has never been any proof that grandfather and Rick even existed, both being conveniently dead. Others have supposedely contacted many police agencies, F.B.I. etc and found no record of his professional association in searches. I have had contemporary students complain he merely sits there chain smoking, claiming to be able to track via telepathy while assistants run a pretty standard outdoor school. The basic texts are good, with the same stupid mistakes about solar stills and improperly illustrated deadfalls that have become fossilized in the literature at large. I find the rest to be to the fluff and woo woo of a 'born again indian. ' I think Tom is an update of the Canadian 'indian writer' Grey Owl. Brown isn't alone in this commercial exploitation. The marvelous SAS pocket survival book is de riguer for my kit. I do however take issue with the SAS guide to survival in Land's End, volume 1.
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