COMMUNITY CEREMONIAL HOGAN ON THE NAVAJO RESERVATION

Yá’áát’ééh. Hello. On the Navajo Nation, we are building a community ceremonial hogan in Thoreau, New Mexico. Many Navajo families have hogans at their homesites for ceremonial use. But many do not. This hogan will fill that need. Anyone in the ten-mile radius of the community who does not have a hogan will able to use this hogan for sacred ceremonies such as the Blessing Way, the Night Way, and the kinaaldah, the womanhood ceremony for moving adolescent girls into the responsibilities of an adult Navajo woman. The Yeibichei – the masked gods, Talking God and Water Sprinkler – will dance here. Chants will be sung here. The sandpaintings will be made here to heal the people and create hózhó – the beautiful balance that creates long life.

Thoreau, New Mexico, sits in a region with a powerful history of building. We sit on the Navajo Nation, but also interact with the Pueblo communities of Laguna, Acoma, and Zuni. We are building this hogan with the traditional technique of puddle adobe or cob-adobe, used in many hogans and Pueblo structures in the region of the Southwest. This project will preserve these building techniques, which create efficient buildings that are cool in summer and warm in the winter. The building also carries the traditions and the prayers that must continue into the future.

We are creating this hogan with the labor of summer workers who are employed through the local chapter house. They have worked hard to hand-dig our foundation trench with mattocks and shovels. They have gathered thousands of pounds of stone from the nearby mountains. They have set the drain and stone in the trench and will now be working to create the stone stemwall. We are using local clay and straw to create the mud walls. The money we need will be used to purchase lumber and the roof material.