Built Environment Reference

Located in Teec Nos Pos, near the crossroads, of U.S. Highways 191 and 160.

A chapter house is a meeting place for Navajo people where they can publicly discuss their opinions about the goings on of the Navajo Nation and its governance. Implemented by Leupp Agency Superintendent John G. Hunter in 1922, the chapter house system quickly transcended the politics of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and gained a communal and cultural relevance of its own. Today, even though chapters are still identified by BIA agency, they have gained and grown at the grassroots level to function as community centers as well as political hubs around the broad territory of the Navajo Nation.

Perhaps a reference to the Tsé Al Náoztii chapter house southwest of the city of Shiprock in western New Mexico.

A chapter house is a meeting place for Navajo people where they can publicly discuss their opinions about the goings on of the Navajo Nation and its governance. Implemented by Leupp Agency Superintendent John G. Hunter in 1922, the chapter house system quickly transcended the politics of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and gained a communal and cultural relevance of its own. Today, even though chapters are still identified by BIA agency, they have gained and grown at the grassroots level to function as community centers as well as political hubs around the broad territory of the Navajo Nation.

The Ramah Navajo chapter is located in Ramah, New Mexico and serves the Ramah band of Navajo, who have occupied the area near Zuni Pueblo since the sixteenth century.

A chapter house is a meeting place for Navajo people where they can publicly discuss their opinions about the goings on of the Navajo Nation and its governance. Implemented by Leupp Agency Superintendent John G. Hunter in 1922, the chapter house system quickly transcended the politics of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and gained a communal and cultural relevance of its own. Today, even though chapters are still identified by BIA agency, they have gained and grown at the grassroots level to function as community centers as well as political hubs around the broad territory of the Navajo Nation.

A sawmill that was established on the Zuni Pueblo Reservation in western New Mexico in the early 1900s as part of a conservation initiative intended to restore damaged forests of ponderosa pine and juniper. Selected biomass was to be removed from the forest, allowing the silvicultural management of a sustainable timber resource whose proceeds would benefit the tribe. Today the modernized sawmill is known as the Pueblo of Zuni Forest Products & Services, a logging enterprise that operates in collaboration between the Zuni Department of Natural Resources and the Cibola National Forest, with the purpose of maintaining healthy forests on Zuni lands and providing timber for homes that are built on the reservation.

The largest university in Memphis, Tennessee, and a leading research institution in the state as well as its surrounding states of Arkansas and Mississippi. The university was founded in 1912 and in 1941 was named Memphis State College, which is how Hillerman refers to it in his 1973 novel Dance Hall of the Dead. However, in 1994 the name was changed, and it is currently known as the University of Memphis.

Raised seating next to the judge in a court of law where a witness in a criminal or civil suit sits while providing testimony that is given under oath.

In Navajo culture, when a person dies inside a hogan, the traditional Navajo house, it is believed that the person’s spirit, known as “chindi,” can remain trapped in the built structure and potentially cause ghost-sickness, an affliction that can manifest in physical or mental illness. Because the Navajo take great care to avoid any contact with dead bodies and the deceased person’s possessions, generally when people are nearing the moment of death they are brought outside of the hogan to die in the open, which will release the chindi into world to disperse. In the case that someone does die indoors, the dwelling must then be vacated and abandoned, and the family constructs a new hogan elsewhere. In order to enable the release of the lingering chindi in the old hogan, a hole is created in the northern wall of the hogan. This hole also functions as a mark indicating that the structure is contaminated by death and is never to be inhabited again.

A funeral home, sometimes referred to as a mortuary, is a funeral service agency that specializes in planning and conducting burials, cremations, and memorial services. This includes preparing the body of the deceased for the funeral, helping the family choose a casket or an urn, as well guiding the selection of music and flowers, and arranging transportation to the cemetery.

Chartered in 1863 as the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, this railway didn't make it to Santa Fe, NM until 1880 when it connected New Mexico in the east to the Southern Pacific Railroad in the west. In 1895, the railway was reorganized as the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company because of poor management, and in 1996 it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad.

A roof hole is a hole in the roof of traditional pueblo structures. These holes allowed air and light to come into the dwelling and smoke to exit the dwelling, but primarily they were used to gain access to interior spaces. Until the Pueblo were influenced by European building styles, their structures did not have ground floor doors. Instead, access to interior spaces was through roof holes, using light-weight ladders that were raised and lowered as needed.

In many ways, this design echoes the way that sacred kivas are entered, through the roof, whether the kiva is erected above ground or built underground. This descent into an interior space is evocative of the Pueblo emergence from the center place of the world, through the narrow passage called the sipapu through which the people climbed at the end of their many-staged journey to the present world.