Native American Sacred Architecture

What is the relationship between sacred geography and architecture? Peter Nabokov explores the Native American worldview in its reverence for land and water as spiritual geography. He gives the example of Taos Blue Lake and its significance in the cosmology of the Taos Pueblo Indians. Then he discusses architecture which he says, “is an important index of cultural identity. The creation of the world is analogous to the construction of a house. The beams, the roof, the door are sometimes encoded as aspects of the wider universe.”

Interview by David Barsamian.

Recorded at KGNU as part of Barsamian’s “Thirty Minutes” program.