A great deal of building has been done to¹ American Indian people. Historically captives in their own country, Indians have become "wards" of the federal government which acts as their trustee and, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, makes or approves most tribal decisions and activities. Building is among the many activities regulated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Acting too often on the premise that the solution of the "Indian problem" and of problems for Indians was assimilation, the BIA has in part sought to fulfill its trust responsibilities by providing the trappings of the American Way in hopes that its tenets might become more attractive. This policy is evident in housing provided for the tribes by the Bureau.

The History of Cheyenne House Forms²
Traditionally, these Indians of the Great Plains lived in tipis, a house form well suited both functionally and symbolically to their lifeway. The conical shape of the tipi allowed it to withstand the high winds of the Plains, where unprotected flat-roofed buildings like those at Agent John demolished. school, might well be demolished. With its interior buffalo hide lining, the tipi was warm in the cold winters: with the lining removed and the cover rolled up some from the ground, the tipi was cooled by circulating air in the hot summers. The tipi was large enough to house the large extended families of the female owners while its height alleviated any sense of crowding. Importantly, moreover, for these nomadic hunters, the tipi was portable. The buffalo hide cover could be rolled up and secured on a travois formed from the tipi poles. The women whose job it was to put up and take down the tipi did so many times during the yearly round as they followed the nomadic buffalo. Only in the summer, when the buffalo convened in large herds supported by lush grasses, did the Cheyennes camp together as a tribe and remain for many weeks in the same location.

The tipi was functionally well suited to Plains life. It was also a symbolic reflection of Plains Indian culture-amicrocosm of the natural, social, and personal world³ as conceived bythose Indian people. Like so much of Plains life, the organization of the ti pi replicated that of the medicine wheel, a circle in four parts, oriented towards the cardinal directions which are understood to originate in its center, the source and summation of its power. A medicine wheel was the outline of a prayer, the stone formation used to mark and direct the prayers of those fasting in the hills, seeking guidance and power. Such formations are still used today on Bear Butte, South Dakota, sacred mountain of the Northern Cheyenne people.

The tipi itself was a kind of prayer. The (scratched) bare earth on which it sat afforded continuing contact with the source and sustenance of physical life. The circularity of its plan reflects what is defined as nature's perfect form. At its center is the fire which heats and holds all within its radius, and immediately above it is the smokehole through which prayers/smoke pass to the Spirit World. Around the fire, each inhabitant has his own lace, the circular space of the tipi being divided into four sections roughly equivalent to the four stages of life as defined by the Cheyenne people. The entrance of the tipi always faced east in the old days, though later orientation was sometimes towards Bear Butte. The Four Winds or Powers associated with the Four Sacred Directions fixed the tipi as they fixed the medicine wheel, orienting the inhabitants in the cosmos.

The division into four, the circle and its center were the essential elements of Plains Indian world view. The tipi as a home thus provided an education for life. It also provided a refuge and support to those who were seeking, confused, deviant, by providing a apace within which to reorient oneself, to reaffirm in one's own experience the order of the world.

Most Plains Indians brought their tipis with them to the reservations. When the buffalo were gone, they used canvas to fashion covers. They did not feel deprived of proper housing. But the BIA, seeking to improve living conditions, pushed hard to replace the tipi with the log cabin, symbol of the white frontier.

The First Log House
The chief who had agreed to try out the new structure never considered living in it himself, but thought it might provide good shelter for his animals. Gradually, however, the log house became common reservation housing. It was in many ways inferior housing. Indians with "roofs over their heads" experienced for the first time the fact that roofs leaked. Insulation became a problem as the inevitable wind blew between the logs, and summer circulation of air was minimal. The log house did not move: families were separated in ways they had not before known. The log houses were also smaller than tipis, admitting fewer family members and, with the low roof, giving even those a sense of crowding unknown in the tipi.

But these and many other "functional" shortfalls of the now-prescribed log cabin were nowhere near so destructive as the redefinition of house form. The circle, nature's perfect form, was replaced by a square which has no center and thus no common focus. Orientation towards the Four Directions was often ignored and sleeping arrangements no longer ordered. There was no place of honor for respected elders when the door did not face east: where were they to sit? The home was discordant with the rest of life; it did not echo the great camp circle with its eastward opening which encompassed all the bands of the tribe, bringing them into relationship with each other through their relationship to the common tribal center. It did not reflect the individual himself, whose behavior was understood as governed by a central heart and four spirits, each associated with one of the Four Directions. The square, squat log house signaled and symbolized change which their inhabitants resist by trying to arrange them as though they were tipis, putting the stove in the center, surrounding it with beds, and using the "corners" as storage or a kind of dead space.

The Coming of Privacy
The one room log cabin gave way to government housing which was larger, leas substantial, and divided into three or four separate rooms. Separate bedrooms meant, in practice, that the old people were separated from the rest of the family at night. The stories end traditions which were told and retold at night as the children went to sleep in the same room with their grandparents were silenced and ultimately lost. There are Cheyennes today who see this loss as directly associated with the new sleeping arrangements. Privacy had never been an issue for them: they sought solitude in the hills and did not feel the presence of family and friends as imposing.

Recent improvements in BIA housing include advantages which most of our society never questions: indoor plumbing, increased size and structural basements. These improvements have, however, brought new problems to the Northern Cheyennes. Indoor plumbing is indeed warmer in the cold winters (when it works, that is). But having an indoor toilet brings inside excretions which by cultural tradition must be kept away, especially far away from medicine people. Indoor plumbing is not always a convenience, then; it brings its own new problems. The new, larger houses have more rooms and are two stories high, removing the inhabitants even farther from the comforting and spiritual connection with the earth. To dig a basement into the earth is a striking example of cultural transgression, since digging in the earth is considered a kind of sacrilege here. ('These are the same people who opposed coal development on their small reservation at least in part on the grounds that tearing up the earth was unthinkable.) Even natural caves, caverns and other holes in the earth are considered dangerous, and often thought to be inhabited by threatening and anomalous beings.

The story continues. The federal government seeks to provide improved housing for Indian people and in ac doing sometimes unwittingly hastens the breakdown of traditional culture. Reservation houses are not homes in the same sense as traditional houses; they are shelters which cannot provide real refuge end support to their inhabitants. As shelters they are functional but as dwellings they are no longer meaningful. The organization domestic apace, like the organization of the world is meaningful and the value of domestic structures depends upon that meaning. The tipi reflected end explained the world as defined by those who lived in it: it provided strength and security through proper symbolic order. The new housing can give none of that.

The old homes of the Cheyennes, the Hopis and the Navajos, like those of other Indian people have persisted in their function as "temples" (see The Temple and the House by Lord Raglan; Routledge and Kagan Paul, London 1964). The Sacred Hat and Sacred Arrows of the Cheyennes live in tipis. Traditional ceremonies are carried out in tipis and those who participate or attend such ceremonies camp in tipis or tents in the old camp circle with its opening to the east and its place for every tribal member. Hut as "temples" the old homes are more than nostalgic symbols of a lost past. They are consistent and appropriate dwellings within which to relearn and reassert "right relations"⁴ in the contemporary world.

Community buildings as well as individual homes have been built for Indian people. On the Northern Cheyenne reservation the settlements at Muddy Ashland, LameDeer and Bushy have each a federally funded community hall-along rectangular tin building to be used for community functions. As it turns out, however, the halls are seldom used for dances or meetings; they are not comfortable facilities for such activities. When they are used, circular apace is created by surrounding the central drums. The greatest use of these buildings is for playing winter hand-game, a popular Indian gambling game in which two sides line up and face each other. The shape of the building is well suited to this community activity.

Some new community structures are much more elaborate. At Black River Falls near Tomah, Wisconsin, e great deal of effort went into the construction of a dance arena for the Winnebago Indiana who lived there. The structure was dug into the earth much like a Greek amphitheatre with benches surrounding and above the arena itself. The dance area is used, but according to the director of housing there, people do not feel comfortable in it. Sharing the common Indian apprehension about caves and other underground openings, the Winnebago do not feel right being below in a hole carved out of the earth. Having learned this, the director of housing opposed plans for brim housing et Black River Fells, despite the obvious insulation value.

So far we have considered the unfortunate and ill-planned building done to American Indiana by the federal government and other private and religious organizations. Examples could be drawn from every reservation end every tribe to illustrate the cultural impropriety of such buildings and the cultural insensitivity of the architects and others responsible for them. But there are some striking examples to demonstrate that it is not always this way.

Sensitive Indian Architecture
Building for Chicago Indians is in some ways more complicated than building on reservations, since there are a hundred different cultural traditions. It is also more crucial. Chicago Indians live and work in other people's buildings and have not been highly visible as an urban ethnic community. Many Chicagoans do not even realize they live in a city with 25,000 Indian people. Whether recently arrived or city born, Chicago Indians seek their own, urban identity. Despite persistent tribal affiliation, they seek as well the company of other Indians whose experience in the city and more generally whet they cell the "dominant" society is familiar.

The American Indian Center of Chicago is the nation's oldest urban Indian center, established for the purpose of assisting newly arrived Indian people in finding jobs end housing especially after the Indian Relocation program of 1952 designed to encourage Indians to leave reservations for cities where they would find work and participate in the broader American society. In 1969, using $100,000 donated to the organization the Center purchased a Masonic Lodge on Wilson Avenue. That purchase made the American Indian Center the first and until very recently the only urban Indian group to own property⁵, to have a place with which to identify.

Land and place have always been critically important to the Indian people. Traditionally, land was viewed as an integral and inalienable pert of tribal history end community, not as a commodity to be owned. (Indeed, the concept of lend ownership was essentially unheard of by those Indian people involved in treaty making with immigrant whites during the period of conflict and conquest The absence of connection with an identifiable place as well as the alienation from the land itself exacerbated the personal and social confusion of urban life for Indian people. The American Indian Center provided Chicago Indians with such a place. The building and grounds as well as the organization itself became very important to Chicago Indiana and to Indians elsewhere who always had a place to go if they came to the city.

But the building itself was old and there was little money to keep it up. Over the years it has been the source of many problems: plumbing, heating, ventilation, inappropriate lay-
out, and so on. About five years ago, the (largely white) fundraising arm of the Center began a major effort to improve the facility. The engineers and architects whose opinions were solicited agreed that the wisest approach would be to sell the property and look elsewhere or demolish the existing building and begin again.

The Indian board acknowledged but would not accept those recommendations. The building was to be renovated, not demolished, even though it seemed impractical economically and architecturally. The building itself had meaning and importance to the Indian people of Chicago. Somewhat miffed by the failure to appreciate the assistance of their technical expertise, the fund-raising group was eventually convinced that Indian people had to make decisions concerning the Indian Center.

To begin with, of course, there was no money, pet provisional plans were necessary before they could even begin to look for grants to accomplish the renovation. Ted Morningstar, a young white architect sympathetic to the situation and the Indian community generally, agreed to draw up plans without fee so that funding could be sought. He would be paid if that funding were found. This was certainly an unusual and a risky arrangement for the architect.

Eventually, they found money to establish a Senior Citizens' Center in the building, and the first major building project was underway.

A Senior Citizens' Center operated by another Indian organization had been previously operating but had lost its funding. One of the architect's first steps in designing the new area at the Indian Center was to visit with people in that program, both the clients and the directors, all of whom were Indian. He hung around long enough to get a feel for his clients, for the kinds of activities and interactions which were important in such a program. He learned, for example, that an arts and crafts program was critical and that the area in which it took place must be enough lighted to allow older people to do small work such as beadwork end quilting. Indian crafts help Indian people to identify with their own cultural traditions, especially in the confusion of urban life. They also allow older people to contribute in various ways-through sale, through teaching, through raffles and give sways-to the Indian community. With the limited (c. 6500 square feet) rectangular space allocated to the project, Ted Morningstar worked out preliminary plane and went over them carefully with program directors and other Indian people, asking for their input, listening, being aware that he might be wrong, seeking to establish en identifiably Indian "place" out of a Masonic lodge/public school building.

The resultant center has been a greet success. Overseeing the work himself, Mr. Morningstar used Indian workers, six to twelve of them at any one time. He feels that this helped to establish a good feeling about the new center end to support his determination to make it an identifiably Indian place for those who would use it. The heart of the center is a large common area used for dances, dinners, card games, meetings. Three small "living rooms," distinct but not closed off come off this central area. Clients can car in small groups if they wish, but still retain a sense of contiguity with the whole place, with all the clients. This is important since there are both personal and tribal preferences and prejudices yet the Center is for all Indians. With no corridors and no closed off areas except the administrative office, the private room problem described move has not appeared here. The central area itself is sort of T-shape, so designed to maximize the amount of natural light in the area of the greatest social interaction. If he had been able to work it out within the confines of the apace and light he had to work with and the budget he had to draw upon, the architect states that he would have chosen a more "natural" shape such as a circle for the central area. Interestingly, when asked why he felt the natural light so important over artificial lighting, he was not sure how to answer: it just seemed to "feel" right for the people who would be using the center, perhaps because of a general feeling for the natural world end a sensitivity to the environment.

In decorating the center, the architect consciously planned to use bright colors which he felt would appeal especially to Indian people, based on his own experience with them. He also retained and carefully restored morels and hanging artwork by Indian people previously stored or displayed in the building in order to emphasize the sense of continuity and of Indian-ness.

When work on the Senior Citizens Center was completed, the clients and staff of the center held a traditional dedication ceremony led by native Medicine people. The people of the community made the Center their own. It was not a copy⁶ of any native structure. It was an urban center designed by an architect who took time to ask and to learn from his clients, and to realize that a building for Indian people would be successful only if it had some relationship to their Indian-ness.

Government policy has changed, but federal housing continues to reflect the same insensitivity. With all good intentions of providing comfortable, civilized, efficient, modern housing for reservation Indians, architects employed by the federal government have succeeded in turning "temple"/homes into housing units, in diminishing the value and interrupting what may be the most important function of the home-the provision of security and support to its inhabitants. Every home has a cultural community context as well as a personal end family one. Space, direction, design are meaningful end their meanings vary cross-culturally. A home which is comfortable is one which addresses those meanings. The architect, then, must make an effort to appreciate cultural variation and valuation of architectural space. Such meanings may be very difficult to discover. They are quite often unconscious, surfacing only when they are offended or opposed in some way.

This accounts for the somewhat vague explanation by a sensitive architect that something simply seems to "feel" right for his clients. We cannot, of course, expect all architects to have the kind of long term commitment to and association with the client community that Ted Morningstar has with the Chicago Indian community We cannot expect the architect to be an anthropologist, though we might expect that he consult with one. We also cannot expect the architect to be native to the community in which he works, although that might produce the moat successful buildings since both conscious and unconscious valuations are then the mast likely to be shared. What we can and must expect of the architect is that he be made aware of the power of his own cultural blinders and thus made sensitive to the existence of differing cultures, differing evaluations of space, direction, design. With this awareness the architect is prepared to learn from his client end thus to build for him rather than for some distant audience.

Footnotes
1. Preposition suggested by the editor.
2. This account is based ® comments by Rubie Sooktis of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.
3. For discussions of this see Straus, "The Tipi," in Bulletin of The Field Museum, 1980.
4. Momaday, N. Scott. The World of the American Indian, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., 1974.
5. NAES College now owns a campus in Chicago.
6. Copies ere generally unsuccessful. They are experienced as built by the wrong people for the wrong purposes, mixing frames of reference, however earnest in their intent.