Moving Forward in Dignity
Kykotsmovi, Arizona · By Rose Houk and Roberto Nutlouis
Three mesas in northeast Arizona have been home to the Hopi people for at least a thousand years. The grassy high desert may at first sight appear unlivable, but the land flourishes with life. Traditionally pueblo-dwelling farmers, the Hopi depend upon the land and the rain. Their sophisticated culture promotes balance and a humble life. They believe that to maintain balance – to live the Hopi way – they must constantly pray, keep their sacred covenant with the Creator, and caretake the land.
Inevitably, impacts from the modern outside world have created many challenges for age-old Hopi ideas and teachings. One young Hopi woman, Lilian Hill, is meeting these challenges head-on, with a vision to reinvigorate her people’s older, self-sufficient lifestyle. She has chosen to start through one of the most basic human needs – housing.
Lilian, a member of the Tobacco Clan, lives in the village of Kykotsmovi at Second Mesa. She wears many hats – community organizer, college student, and poet – and her deep brown eyes are unwavering in her focus on sustainability and self-determination for her people. Living her entire life in the community, Lilian has seen firsthand the dire need for positive change. And so she decided to act. That action has taken the form of a project called Moving Forward in Dignity: Sustainable Housing for Indigenous People. The project’s commitment, Lilian explains, is to create “affordable and culturally relevant sustainable housing for indigenous communities.” It is designed “to address the critical housing need within these communities, whose members are often homeless or live in substandard housing.”
The project was born of her family’s personal experiences. Lilian’s great-grandfather was a traditional builder, and her parents decided to obtain a “prototype” traditional home from the federal government’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Unfortunately, the dwelling suffers from leaking and cracked walls and roof, a malfunctioning electrical system, expensive central heating, thin frame walls, and bad concrete. “Such housing,” Lilian asserts, “is of poor quality, ignorant of cultural needs, and expensive, particularly in relation to income and traditional lifestyle.” On the Hopi Reservation, 30 percent of existing housing has serious deficiencies, she reports, and among the ten thousand Hopi living on the mesas, only 41 percent own their own home.
In general, houses on the reservation today include recently built cinderblock homes, manufactured trailers, and poorly built HUD homes. “The traditionally built stone and earth homes and traditional building techniques are becoming obsolete and are no longer being encouraged or supported,” Lilian explains.
To address this situation, Lilian helped found the Sustainable Housing for Indigenous People project, with collaborators Paola Marcus-Carranza, the Cob Cottage Company, and Seven Generations Natural Builders in Bolinas, California. Lilian and her friend Paola Marcus took a course to learn a natural earth-building technique called the cob method. “Cob,” she says, “is one of the world’s most common construction materials.” It’s a “gourmet mix” of clay, sand, straw, and water, hand-sculpted while pliable. The term “cob” comes from Old English, and refers to a lump or rounded mass. Builders use hands and feet to form the material, which is then laid up without forms, in a process akin to sculpting clay. Near her home, Lilian found abundant clay and sand. Water comes from a pipe, but cob building, she says, is not water intensive. The method is especially well suited to northeast Arizona’s climate because homes stay cool in summer and warm in winter. Also, it employs local materials and human skills, and results in lower maintenance and utility costs.
Lilian’s innovative ideas combine traditional Hopi stone masonry techniques with cob building. In the home she and her family are building, the foundation and stem walls are of sandstone cut by her uncles at an old quarry at Hopi. The cob is laid on top of it. The north wall is straw bales with cob over them. Plastered earthen floors, niches in the walls, and a traditional roof of pine beams, branch latticework, sheep wool, and clay will complete the structure.
Lilian first spent a year of research on the building technique, then another year observing the cycle of the sun for best positioning of the house. She also took time to present the idea to the local community and was gratified by the “huge response, especially from the older women.”
Then building began. Over time, some fifteen people have been actively involved in the construction, and many others have come simply to watch the process. “Our project,” Lilian explains, “utilizes owner-builder and volunteer help from the local community, which will greatly decrease the total construction cost and will encourage unity and cooperation between the community and those involved.” Some of these age-old methods have to be taught and re-taught. With help from Tim Reith and Sasha Rabin of Seven Generations, Lilian presents workshops to train people who are interested in this type of building. “I’m excited about these workshops,” she says, “because they bring together people from different backgrounds and professions to exchange ideas. Everyone has valuable knowledge to share and positive change rests in such exchanges of ideas and understandings.”
There’s a bigger idea in all of this too. When people are involved in building their own homes, they receive a sense of place and appreciation that is greater than simply making a monetary investment in a place to live. “A home,” Lilian observes, “is a sacred place where life evolves as families care for one another. Individual thoughts, prayers, and the teachings of the people evolve in a home.” As people rediscover this important concept, Lilian is confident that they can regain self-sufficiency and depend less on the federal government.
“Ultimately,” Lilian says, “we want to create a locally run organization to continue this work – one that provides people with training, the economic opportunity, and a long-term, effective structure in order to continue building sustainable and affordable homes in the future.”
“I’m just one person, trying to find a solution,” says Lilian modestly – a solution that fits with her community, the environment, and the Hopi way.
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