Dear World,

We are reaching out to you now to ask for help with a traditional Diné or Navajo Hoghan that we are building. We are building this ceremonial structure in our community because we are planting the light of prayer in a place of challenge and hardship for our people. The ceremonial hoghan is the place where we meet, where we think and plan, where we perform our ceremonies, and where we pray to restore hozho and balance to the entire world.

We are building this particular hoghan in an area where corporations want to mine the ground beneath our feet for coal and helium. Our clan mother, Elouise Brown, wants this hoghan in her community so she can continue to organize our people and pray for the survival of our homeland. She has already defeated one coal fired power plant from going up in this sacred area in northwestern New Mexico. This is near the four corners region, where our people have been praying and growing and learning since time immemorial, even since the days of the anasazi, and the civilizations that flourished here long before columbus was born.

We continue to hold this place sacred, and even though the rest of the world does not pay attention to us, or to the sacred fabric of this desert homeland, we know it is our duty to protect it from the hawks and the businessmen who want to break the earth open and take what exists inside. We know it is our duty to take a stand for Mother Earth and this hoghan will help us to do that.

This hoghan is a living beacon of beauty and hope in a place most of the world has forgotten. This hoghan is our physical stake in the ground saying, “No, we won’t go anywhere.”

Us Diné, us Navajo, we are desert people. We are tough as nails because we have to be to exist in this area of high unemployment and environmental challenges. Our people know how to work with the desert ecosystem to create abundance through corn, beans, squash, amaranth and through our sacred sheep.

This hoghan will go up near the coal drag lines and our people will do our ceremonies here to gather our strength to continue fighting resource extraction. We can’t all just lay down and allow this way of life to go unchallenged. Somebody has to stand up and assert that the land is sacred, and this is what our Clan Mother Elouise Brown does every day.

Please chip in and help us give this gift to her. We are very close to finishing but we need more funds for materials and a very humble wage for the men who are building it in the traditional way.

By donating to this crowdfunding campaign we are asserting that all of us, no matter what color skin we have, no matter what language we speak, can still unite to make a difference. With all the distractions of the world, we must not remember our power to create. Our power to create beauty. Our power to create harmony. Our power to create unity. Our power to create kinship with one another.

Thank you so much for considering joining arms with us and if you cannot donate, your prayers are worth even more. Together we must keep walking forward with love in our hearts and faith in our steps. If we do this, we have already won the most important battle, which is the battle to never give up and to walk with a loving heart.

BUDGET:

Materials: $15,000 (scaffolds, chainsaws, shovels, cement mixers, pond liner, door, framing lumber, stove, chimney, bricks for retaining wall)

Labor $15,000 (shimmies, plaster, sealing, hanging door, placing stove chimney, mixing and layering 50+ tons clay/straw/dirt/water, final plaster, placing retaining wall).

Help Build Our Clan Mother's Ceremony House!

By Diné Bina'nitin Dóó O'hoo'aah

Help Build Our Clan Mother's Ceremony House!

A hoghan (ceremony house) to organize against resource extraction