Guardian Art is a self defense form that comes from Native American and global indigenous heritage. It is fusion of MMA and Parkour styles that resemble the ancient ninja training. INDIGENOUS HERITAGEThe founding practitioners of Guardian Art were not only Native Americans, but from indigenous people from all over the world. With a global heritage, our fighting art spans beyond punching and kicking, and includes coordination training and cultural teachings from our indigenous ancestry. Our training is often referred to as the Jedi version of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), as we train striking, grappling, and sword fighting in different types of environments that take participants beyond a typical flat karate floor. To improve our mobility in these different environments, Guardian Art incorporates acrobatics and obstacle course training. An English translation for this type of ancient coordination training is "Spirit Running," from which parkour originates. Guardian Art is an intensive training program that encourages the flow of creative freedom, but also demands the commitment and discipline found in ancient fighting arts.NOT A MARTIAL ART, MORE THAN SELF-DEFENSEWith indigenous ancestry comes a long history of colonization that has resulted in loss of culture and identity. A well known example of this is using "Indian" to identify Native Americans. Therefore, it is vital to keep our culture strong by communicating what we represent as accurately as we can in whichever language is being used (English in this case). We do not describe our art as a martial art or self-defense, because those words do not accurately reflect our philosophy. The goal of Guardian Art is to learn how to protect others, whereas "self-defense" means protecting only yourself and "martial" means war. In the meantime, words like "martial arts" and "parkour" must be used in our ads so that people can find us, but we look towards a day.