Built Environment Reference

A hogan is one of several traditional Navajo structures. Building hogans has ceremonial significance, and instructions for their construction have been passed down for generations, originating with the Holy People. In creation stories, the whole Navajo homeland is referred to as a hogan, and the walls that comprise the hogan's construction correspond with each of the cardinal directions and the four sacred mountains that mark the breadth of the Navajo homeland. As an extension of the Navajo belief system, the hogan's health and equilibrium need to be nourished and protected, similar to the people who live inside it. Although a hogan functions on a daily level as a ceremonial space for the observance of cumulatively significant small rituals, the hogan can also provide a space for larger healing practices such as ceremonial singing and associated sandpaintings.

A colloquial term referring to a medical device known as the negative pressure ventilator. The device is a large metal tank that can accommodate a human body, providing mechanical respiratory assistance for patients who are unable to breathe on their own. A basic model of the negative pressure ventilator tank was constructed in 1927 by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw at Harvard University. Although later models have improved functionality and comfort, the principle design was maintained, with an electric motor powering a pump that changes the pressure inside the airtight metal tube, simulating the pulling of air in and out of the lungs. Negative pressure ventilators were used extensively in hospitals in the 1940s and 1950s during the polio epidemic. They are still used in many cases where patients, for a variety of reasons including paralysis and temporary disabling of the diaphragm, fail to breathe normally on their own.

The Houses of the Enemy of the Dead are large cliff dwellings that were originally occupied by the Ancestral Puebloans, also referred to as the Anasazi. These structures are generally made from stone masonry and are built in room blocks one on top of another, similar to apartment-style housing today. These room blocks are both residential apartments and storage rooms and are accessed through the roof.

Although the Navajo word Anaasází has been translated as "ancient enemy" by Western anthropologists, the English translation preferred by Navajo and Puebloan cultures is "ancient ones."

The Spanish word for oven is horno. In the pueblos, hornos are adobe earth structures built separately from dwelling structures. With a distinct, bee-hive shape, hornos stand about 2-3 feet tall. Generally used for baking bread, the oval pyramid shape of the oven was appropriated by early Hispanic settlers, who brought the horno inside their adobe brick homes and sited it in a corner of the sala, or great room. Traditional hornos are still in use today, as are the beehive-shaped, or kiva-style, fireplaces found in the mission-style architecture of Santa Fe.

A prestigious private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard was the original institution in the U.S. Ivy League, a group of socially and academically elite institutions in the northeastern U.S. Harvard was also the first university founded in the U.S.

An organizational schema comprised of a network of interconnecting lines that create integrated series of squares.

A small compartment in the dashboard of a vehicle, usually on the passenger's side, with a hinged door that swings open toward the floor. Althought the glovebox was initially intended to hold the gloves worn by early drivers whose vehicle compartments were open to the air, gloveboxes have evolved to contain an array of miscellaneous items that may include spare change, flashlights, batteries, street maps, gum, or the occassional handgun.

A seasonal camp, often located in the mountains, where sheep can graze. These camps can be occupied either during summer or year round.

A trap consisting of a weight that is balanced to fall, crush, and kill an animal.

Deadfall can also refer to a mass of tangled brush and shrubs.

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.