hey guys jenna here welcome back to my channel where i take you on tours of creative spaces
and feature alternative lifestyles today we're traveling to the navajo nation to
tour several unique airbnbs that represent the homes of the navajo people from the past
present and what could be possible for the future this eco retreat is ran by a navajo family who has
ancestral ties to the property their goal is to preserve the land they love while offering
an opportunity for others to experience the authentic beauty and culture of the navajo people
this video is a continuation of my channel's partnership with airbnb where i show you some
of the most unique and quirkiest rentals and share the stories behind the hosts that own them
hi my name is allery smeehan and welcome to shashed in an echo retreat
this is a small glamping hotel we are located
on the navajo indian reservation outside of page arizona
in navajo it's called satelligente
here at shashana we have eight properties on site we have two hogans two wagons three belt tents
and the cube
the evolution of this property started from a family structure built by my grandfather it was
my grandparents home and it raised the second generation of their grandchildren including me
this is my home i left when i was a teenager you know you get raised someplace and you
think it's the worst place ever of course i felt that way and i left for about 15 years
it took my husband paul to show me that you know this is a beautiful place and you know people
do want to see it i didn't realize that everybody wanted to stay here
because this is my home and you don't look at your home in that way
now i feel an immense responsibility to this land in my adulthood i can see the beauty here
i have been allowed to make a very good living for my family by hosting we do things in an authentic
way this is a direct homage to the navajo people the way that i was raised the way that
many many of us were raised the way that a lot of navajo still live
today we have no running water no electricity as a part of the experience because this is
truly a navajo experience just a small taste of what life is like here the absolute beauty
here that's what we want you to take away the goal is to become an iconic stop on the
navajo indian reservation there's not a lot of iconic spots we lack the infrastructure for that
people come here and they say you've got a beautiful home i always say i completely agree
because i have absolutely nothing to do with it i'm just lucky enough to live here the land it
is like my mother and my higher power i pray to it provides for me this is what i truly believe
this is the traditional logan earth hogan navajo culture has a duality and this is built in
what we refer to as the female style this is clay and sand mixed together with the bark of
the juniper tree it acts as a support system as well as insulation system
we're told that the holy people showed us how to make this and the gods indeed did
show us how to make it because it's almost sacred geometry inside
this hogan was built about four years ago by my clan brother benedict daniels
when you watch somebody do something that they love to do and they do it well it's like
looking at poetry in motion and he was like that like a dance with this wood if you will
as it was being built it carries that soul and the energy that he put into it
because traditional hogans like this mean quite a bit to navajos it's sort of like a person
or your grandma welcoming you and that's how we feel when we entered a hogan like this
a nice homey feel to it to us where we belong is in in a home like this it feels good to us
i would hope that my guests who stay here also feel the same way
we started out with wall tents we found out that they were just too cumbersome for us to have so we
moved to the belt tents that was sort of an homage to in the navajos who lived in the early 1900s
we've always lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle my grandmother's
generation my parents generation they remember living in these wall tents
this is the epitome of glamping we have outfitted this lovely tent with furniture so
people could get a good night's sleep in the the beautiful outdoors
we put pendleton blankets in here along with goose down comforters sometimes it
can get a little chilly out here and we want our guests to be nice and cozy in here and
we try to be mindful of all the things that would be in a nice hotel room as well
so these are the restored sheep wagons we found them on craigslist they come from
a sheep ranch in montana the guy who restored them took the time to replace board by board
because he wanted to preserve the integrity of the space he did an amazing job everything
painstakingly done these were actually used back in in the late 1800s early 1900s
sheepherders would take these wagons out onto the range and take care of these huge sheep
herds for months on end they're neat little spaces they're cozy so why don't we take a look inside
one of my favorite features of this is this table that comes out and obviously you have
your seating here already so i always thought this was really neat
so i raised navajo churro sheep and they are the original sheep to this area those sheep are
descended from the churras who were originally brought here by the spanish conquistadors back
in the 1500s to 1600s there are stories that we did have sheep before the holy people took them
away from us but someday they would bring them back to us and that's what we believe that they
did they've been returned to us so the animals are something that i learned from my grandmother
so i'm passing that down to my kids you know i place that responsibility upon them and i call
those sheep theirs when they go forward in life it's something that would anchor them here at home
this cube is just a step into the future what is possible for navajo hopefully we can introduce
some incredible structures for navajo people in general who will welcome some of these new designs
into their homes chose a metal that would rust and sort of blend back into the environment
the cube was where we felt free to
add a lot of creative pieces we had such a great time decorating this
this piece of art is something that we're really proud of originals from landis bahi
so they're lego pieces that he custom made for us and we're really really proud of these and
this place is filled with you know touches like that we got these three paintings from a navajo
painter by the name of jason parrish all of the pieces in here turned out to be really special
when people leave here i would hope that they would remember the peace
i would hope that everybody makes that connection to the land and carry it to wherever they go
we've been hosting for quite some time these particular guests came in late at night i hear
a car door open it closes like 15 seconds later this wailing sound comes she eventually caught
her breath enough to say i have never seen the stars in my life she said i've only seen them
in magazines she got that opportunity here so i think it was really special to be a part of that
what i love the most about hosting is getting to see other people and meet other people who are
from different cultures a lot of these people are wanting a connection as well and i'll come
over with some breakfast and you know have some amazing conversations with people that
i would have never met otherwise alright guys i hope you enjoyed this week's unique tour make
sure to like share and subscribe and i will see you next friday with an all new video