Original Material Copyright © 1999 By Lin Stone
Design and Layout (c) copyright 1999 by Browzer Books

Lin Stone is a writer, author, photographer, and is now concentrating on producing html works.

    It was the prestigous Arizona Republic that carried an article some time ago on HOW TO BUILD A HOGAN. The byline said it was written by a features writer on the staff.

It began with a question.

    "How do you build a Hogan?
    "First you look around for Indians who want to work.
    "When you realize there aren't any then you look around for Indians who will work anyway."

    That article angered a lot of Navajo, and anyone else who knew them.   It angered me that an Arizona paper would publish an article by a writer who by his own words didn't even know a male hogan from a female hogan. It angered me even more that I saw the article pasted to a prominent wall at a nationally famous trading post/museum on the Navajo reservation where thousands of tourists could read it, and feel superior.

Lazy Indians?

Op-Skietch!
(No way, Jose)

Any time someone launches into self righteous judgment of another people you can bet most of the facts are not straight. In this case the writer was at least a year off the mark, as well as building a hogan of the wrong gender.

    It is true that you can just just jump in to lash poles together and erect an edifice the way that writer described. The sightless, soul-less skyscrapers made by Euromericans testify that edifices can be built higher than an eagle's nest.

   When Euromericans build an edifice only a few factors are even considered.

View is important.
Therefore, if there be trees in the way, they hew them down.

If the ground is not solid,
they add rocks.

If a stream comes too close,
they move it.

If the site is not level,
they fill it.

This is natural to Euromericans because Mother Earth is not sacred to them;
trees are not alive, and THEY are more important than all the birds and animals around.

    For the Navajo the first step of building begins at least a year, sometimes even two or three years before the first tree is asked to give up its life for the building of a hogan.

    "In many parts of the Navajo reservation if you walk in the same tracks twice when you come again, it will be a gully.  Mother Earth is sacred here, and must be protected."

    When hogans are built the old way you study it out in your mind.

"If I build here what trees will we lose? If I build here what trails will I make? If I build here where will the rain run? If I build here, what of the wind? What of the snow? Will the fox that lives just yonder have to move? How much water must I bring in? If I elect to have electricity, what will erecting the lines destroy? Where will my garbage go? What will the birds do when I am here?"

    All of the permutations arising from seasonal changes are taken into consideration, with with special thought given to all the changes made with the seasons changing.

"Once it is studied out, then you ask the tribe if you can build the hogan in the site you have selected. The tribe makes sure you haven't overlooked anything."

    Only after all this (and other things too) do you come to what the newspaper writer thought was the first step. "First you look around for Indians willing to work" and in spite of his ignorance, you will find them in number, not a few.

    They come, walking softly in respect for Mother Earth.

They bring sacred corn pollen
to bless the hogan so that it will be
a happy home that can last a lifetime.
They come with glad hearts and willing hands.

    The Navajo have been living here successfully since the Man in the Moon was just a little boy. When you, Any Writer of Purple Prose, judge another people use their measuring stick; it works better than yours.

As Tony Hillerman has discovered; it sells better too.

    The end.

Lin Stone is a writer, author, photographer, and is now concentrating on producing html works.

    PROFILE: As a full time freelance writer my business articles have appeared in many Bureau of Business Practice publications. My writing and/or photographs have also been published in Farm Pond Harvest, Life in the Times, Party & Paper, American Salesman, Today's Pawnbroker, Opportunity, Good Reading, Farm Store, Crappie Fisherman, Little Rock Free Press, Arkansas Women's Journal, Fennetration, etc.

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