Hawk Circle

Earth Shelters
Providing Powerful Educational Spaces that Connect Participants to History and Nature

You can read a historical novel or text book about native peoples, or watch a video re-enactment documentary or feature film like the Last of the Mohicans, all in the quest to give students, children, or adults a Native experience that has meaning. All of that pales in comparison to the way your eyes adjust to the interior darkness as you enter a real wigwam, longhouse or wickiup. As you lean forward to go through the door, you can feel the clean, hardpacked dirt floor, smell the central firepit and notice the dryness of the air inside. Sitting down, you can see authentic pottery, or tanned furs, the bows and arrows, bark baskets and containers holding fire-making tools and natural fibers.

For the first time, you can feel what it was like to live hundreds of years ago, on a warm bed inside a comfortable shelter. You can feel that the shelter will keep you dry, even in an intense rain, or snowy night. History becomes something that is known, not just intellectually, but felt, and this experience infuses our understanding forever.

The addition of an authentic native shelter, with authentic replicas usually becomes the centerpiece of any school, museum, discovery center, environmental education program or children’s center grounds. At Hawk Circle, when children arrive, the first thing they do when they get out of the car is to run as fast as they can to our large tipi or our grass thatch hut, and go inside. Even if they have been inside twenty times before, they simply must be inside, to feel what life is like inside of a real Lakota style tipi or hut, enjoying the way the poles draw your eyes upwards, and how the round shape just feels so different than our square houses and classrooms. The connection to the natural world is powerful and profound, and the images, sensations and perceptions long-lasting too.

If you are thinking of adding a Hawk Circle Earth Shelter, or any of our replicas, to your program, please know that we will use the highest quality materials, and do whatever we can to help your program benefit fully from these projects. We will communicate effectively and have aggreements, with approximate completion dates, to the best of our ability, and our policy of not over-booking our season helps you know what you will receive and when, so you can plan accordingly with your staff programs and community events. We take great pride in making your program, as successful and unique as we can, through our work, by careful attention to details that casual visitors or experienced native arts staff will notice and appreciate.....

Enjoy the contents and please feel free to call us if you have any questions.

                                       -Ricardo Sierra

The Wilderness Shelter

This shelter program varies in price because it is based on many variables, such as the number of students and instructors who will be participating, the distance of the program from Hawk Circle, the materials needed, length and content of program and several others. They range in price from $450-1,200, depending on the above options. It is a process oriented experience.
The Northern Woodlands Wickiup:

While this shelter is not as time consuming to make as a wigwam or longhouse, it does require that the poles be sturdy, peeled and of rot-resistant wood, and use plenty of bark to cover the shelter adequately. Wickiups range in price from $5,000-$6,000, depending on the size.
The Algonkian Wigwam:
Our standard wigwams are approximately 12 feet in interior diameter, 6 feet high, and are thatched, covered in bark, with two beds, two shelves, a fire pit and clay-lined smokehole. These are $7,200.
The Larger, Oval-Shaped Algonkian Wigwam:
This is a shelter that is sort of like a mini-longhouse, with 6-7 foot high interior, and 12 foot by 18 foot floor plan. It is approximately one and a half times the size of the original wigwam, and can hold more students for a program or event. All of the options listed above are standard with this shelter. The cost for this shelter is $9,000.
The Algonkian Longhouse:
This medium sized earth shelter would typically hold a large, extended family group and has a rounded roof, and rounded ends. It is approximately 12 feet high, 14 feet wide and 25 feet long, and is covered in thatch as well as bark slabs for weather protection. The interior has extensive benches, sleeping platforms and area for gear storage and teaching replicas. An internal firepit is also used in these shelters. The cost for a medium sized shelter is $28,000, complete.
Large Algonkian, Mohican or Iroquiosian Longhouse:
At 15 feet high, 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, this shelter is one of the largest we build. It has a rounded, arched roof, with flat ends, and is built with strong locust or red cedar poles/posts. We also have beds on three of the walls of this large shelter. It is $34,000, complete.
The Bark House-Iroquiosian Longhouse:
This shelter was built after contact with the colonial settlers, and has an angled but flat, gabled roof, flat walls and ends and bunk style beds inside. It is 15 feet high, 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, usually, and it uses a solid locust frame, with hand forged iron spikes and bark lashing or twine, (historically correct). It usually takes about two years for three instructors to gather, prepare and make the materials for this shelter, allowing for drying time, seasonal collection of materials, storage and other issues. It is an impressive shelter, and sure to be an anchor feature of any school, discovery center or museum educational program. The fee for this shelter is $50,000.

Our season for gathering and preparation is short so we can only contract for a few shelters before we are fully committed for the year. We can put your organization on our waiting list for the following year, and we highly encourage you to plan well in advance if you are in need of a shelter for your programs and have a specific time frame from which you are working.