Navajo family spreads the secrets of Antelope Canyon
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Antelope Canyon attracts between 1 million and 3 million tourists each year. It’s become a global destination for tourists and photographers, who are drawn to the orange waves and curves on the canyon walls, carved over time by floods.
Long before the tourist crowds, Navajo families called the area home, growing crops and raising livestock on the land near present-day Page, Arizona.
“When we were young, we’d come hiking in the canyon and riding horses in the canyon,” Logan Tsinigine said.
His family has deep roots in the area, but for generations they didn’t speak of the sadness they endured inside Antelope Canyon.
“We’d always kept these canyons to ourselves,” he said. “We knew the significance and importance of what happened here years ago. The tragic history we have? We were told we shouldn’t bring it up.”
Tsinigine is referring to a shameful time in American history, as the Navajo people faced systemic oppression.
In the 1860s, during what is sometimes known as the “Long Walk,” thousands of Navajo people were force-marched from their land to camps in New Mexico.
Facing that kind of terror, Tsinigine’s great-great grandfather took heroic measures for Navajo families. Hastiin Tadidinii helped many people avoid capture by hiding them inside the narrow slot canyon passages and caves.
Between the “Long Walk” and forced assimilation at Indian boarding schools, the Navajo culture was nearly lost.
“It almost erased our people,” Tsinigine said.
After the families were allowed to return to their land, the horrors they’d endured were not discussed.
“But now we know, if these stories are lost, history tends to repeat itself. We’ve got to get this known so the real history comes out,” Tsinigine said.
In the name of historic preservation, the Tsinigine family helped create a new documentary about his ancestors and Antelope Canyon’s role in the culture’s survival.
The documentary, “Bad Indian: Hiding in Antelope Canyon,” premiered to several sellout crowds at the Phoenix International Film Festival in April.
The family is one of several with rights to operate different parts of the slot canyon. To complement their Antelope Canyon X experience, they more recently opened another section, known as Cardiac Canyon.
They’re taking a less commercialized approach with Cardiac Canyon, capping the number of visitors to six per day.
“You can come see the real-life museum of how we lived and how things were,” Tsinigine said.
Navajo guides will point out the hiding spots used to help people avoid capture, along with other culturally and spiritually important parts of the canyon.
“We’d like to share it, so everybody learns what really happened here, and how we survived through perseverance,” he said.
While they’re happy to welcome tourists from around the world, the family hopes visitors leave with a new appreciation for Navajo history, in addition to their beautiful photographs.
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