National Tribal Healthy Homes
Assessment, Training &
Technical Assistance Support Center

Information for Kids
-Download Puzzles & Activities from Healthy Home Heritage
-Traditional American Indian Housing

Download Puzzles & Activities from Healthy Home Heritage (back to menu)
Hey kids! The beaver kits, Birch and Aspen, have a great coloring and activity book out called Healthy Home Heritage and they want you to have some of their favorite pages from the book. Click on the links below to download some fun and challenging activities. Good luck and have fun!

-Get the Lead Out Crossword Puzzle
-Mildew So-Dew-Ku
-Put Radon on Your Radar Maze
-Home Hazards Check List

Do you want your very own copy of Healthy Home Heritage?
Click here and order your free copy!

Traditional American Indian Housing (back to menu)
In Native American culture, the dwelling was far more than a physical shelter. For many Native Americans, the house was a physical and spiritual representation of the universe. Native Americans saw themselves as one component of nature, sharing a living spirit that pervaded everything—animate (living) and inanimate (nonliving) objects alike. For example, peoples of the Great Plains felt it was a privilege to live in dwellings covered with the skin of the buffalo and thus to partake of the spirit of the animal that provided nearly all their food. Before peoples of the Pacific Northwest built a house, they asked permission of the earth to disturb the ground so they could make the house. They would offer prayers to the red cedar if they needed a log for the house.

When Europeans first ventured onto the continent, hundreds of individual nations or tribal groups lived throughout North America —each using local building materials and adapting their housing and way of life to the local climate. Within the United States , at least ten geographic and cultural regions evolved, each of which corresponded with a geographic and climatic zone. In each region, one or at most two distinctive house types tended to prevail. These traditional dwellings, unique to a region, evolved over thousands of years in response to a way of life, to readily available building materials, and to local climates. Houses built in one region would have been impractical and uncomfortable if built in a different region. More important, because houses served as models of the universe, they would have no meaning in another region.

Learn all about these traditional American Indian housing types:

-Northeastern Houses - Longhouse
-Southeastern Houses - Wattle and Daub
-Southeastern Houses - Chickee
-Great Plains - Tipi (or Tepee)
-Arctic - Igloo (or Iglu)
-Northwestern Houses - Plank House
-Southwestern Houses - Hogan
-Southwestern Houses - Pueblo
-Southwestern Houses - Cliff Dwelling