Hooghan is our home, and a permanent structure. Female hooghans, Hooghan Nimazi, are used for living quarters, while male hooghans, Alch'i'adeeza, are used for ceremonial purposes. Chaha’oh is our brush arbor and a temporary structure usually built in the summer. Tá’cheeh Baahane’ is our sweat lodge, built for men only or for women only, used for purification. All of these structures have their doors facing east. Diné (Navajo) weaving looms are generally woven inside one’s hooghan. Earlier photographs depict very large weavings done outside, sometimes under summer arbors, but our family and most weavers have never woven outside nor do they remember their elders weaving outside, so we surmise that looms were taken outside for better lightening and of course to prop the setting.

We lived in a large house made out of river rocks built by my father at Newcomb, NM on the Navajo Nation. It had all the elements of a hooghan, an east door, a smoke hole in the middle for our prayers to the Holy People, and a north window. It was cool in the summer and warm in the winter just like a well-built hooghan. In my mother’s weaving room, my father built a floor to ceiling weaving loom for her large projects, using heavy duty construction grade pipes and large metal turnbuckles. Only challenge was arranging her seat as she wove higher. But she also used the roll under method but that required strong people to help with the take down and to roll the weaving under. She also had smaller looms that she would carry throughout the house, but she never wove outside or sat on the floor to weave.

The chaha’oh, a temporary structure is needed for shade, useful when families are on the move, coolness in the summertime, or a cooking area for a large gathering. They are made out of sturdy poles stuck in the ground and can be any shape. Other poles are strung together with wire and poles laid in lattice work on top. Then trees or other green shrubbery are chopped and woven in on the top and on the sides, some of them are wired in. These structures are usually left up until it falls apart. They are fun to sleep under in the summertime, when the wind blows, you hear the crinkling of the dried leaves and if they fall on your face, you think a large moth landed on you.

Lynda Teller Pete

June 2020