What is Martin Black's contribution to natural horsemanship?

Martin Black's contribution to natural horsemanship is the preservation and transmission of the working ranch and vaquero dimensions of the Dorrance tradition in a contemporary clinic and written form that makes these dimensions accessible to practitioners who might not otherwise encounter them — ensuring that the complete picture of what the tradition represents remains visible rather than being reduced to the groundwork and beginning under-saddle focus that most of the clinic-based natural horsemanship world addresses. The natural horsemanship movement's mainstream expression has been primarily oriented toward recreational riders and arena performance, which has meant that the working ranch application of the tradition's principles and the complete vaquero progression toward the finished bridle horse have been less visible in mainstream natural horsemanship than in the working horse community that Black comes from. By teaching from the working ranch context and insisting on the complete progression from snaffle through bridle horse, Black has maintained a connection to the tradition's roots in practical working horsemanship that provides an important corrective to the arena and recreational drift of the mainstream movement. His directness of connection to Tom and Bill Dorrance and Ray Hunt gives his articulation of the tradition an authority that practitioners further from the source cannot always claim, and his Sustainable Horsemanship provides a practical written resource for the working ranch and vaquero dimensions of the tradition that the foundational texts of Dorrance and Hunt did not fully address. For practitioners who want to understand the complete arc of what natural horsemanship aspires to — from the earliest groundwork through the finished bridle horse working cattle on the open range — Black's teaching and writing are among the most important resources in the contemporary tradition.