Navajo hogans take shape at This Is the Place Heritage Park

Nine green juniper timbers form the outline of the Navajo hogan at the base of the foothills on the east end of This Is the Place Heritage Park.

The dwelling is female, rounder and quite a bit larger than the teepee-shaped male hogan rising up a few feet away. She is almost finished now, her wood placed just so to emulate living trees. His roof reaches a point at the joining of three interlocked bowed timbers; hers resembles an upside-down bird's nest, the roof spiraling clockwise beneath its cover of red clay and hairy bark. Both doorways open to the east, to welcome the sunrise.

These structures are the first of what will be a larger Native American village. And nothing about the Navajo hogans — or the sweat lodge and shade house that will soon join them — is accidental. Those timbers, for instance, represent the nine months a woman carries her child before giving birth. Details are important to the man who has done most of the construction. And in Navajo culture, everything has gender. So Lorin Cummings was careful to put a male post, its wood twisting to the right, on the right, a female post on the left.

Cummings, who is one-half Navajo, divides work hours between handling the park's finances and building his small Navajo neighborhood.

The female hogan is about 20 feet in diameter, the male 15 feet. Most Navajos no longer live in hogans, but many ceremonies are still done there. Hogans can be home, or a place of worship and awakening, says Betty Begay. Her husband Roy Begay, a Navajo healer, will bless the hogans in a private ceremony preceding a public one May 23.

"It is a family unit and also a place where we go to pray," she says.

It might be in such a structure that a soldier, traumatized and fatigued by war, seeks ceremonies and blessings to renew his spirit and retune him to nature, she says. Ceremonies that take place in hogans and teepees can "restore life."

The Native American village, viewable starting May 15, has been a long time coming, says Lacee Harris, a northern Ute/northern Piute who is a mental health therapist at the Indian Walk-in Center in Salt Lake City.

"This is a continuation and completion of a dream that had started way back when" in the 1970s, says Harris, who served on an early committee to bring Native American scenes into the historic park. He'll also bless the site. The park exists to celebrate Utah's heritage from the years between Mormon pioneer arrival and statehood, telling the stories of all the inhabitants, including not only Mormons, but Navajo, Shoshone, Goshute, Piute and Ute tribes who were already here. Each has been invited to build traditional structures in the park. Soon teepees will trace the curve of the hillside.