Boone's tale of the Diné, the Navajo people, whose land this red country is — their long presence, the sacred canyons like Antelope, and respect for a living homeland.
As we roll through Page, look out past the town to all that red rock running to the horizon, and understand something, friend — Ranger Merrick here, and this is not empty country, and it never was. This is Diné Bikéyah, the land of the Diné, the people most folks call the Navajo, and it wraps clear around this town on every side.
The Navajo Nation is the largest Native reservation in the country — bigger than some whole states — and the Diné have made their home in this canyon country for centuries upon centuries, herding sheep, weaving, farming the washes, living close to a hard and holy land. Their whole world is bounded by four sacred mountains, and the ground you're driving on lies right in the heart of it. When the government wanted to build the dam and the town of Page, they had to trade the Navajo Nation for this very mesa. This land has an old, old claim on it, and it belongs, in every way that matters, to the people who were here long before the dam, the highway, or the tour bus.
You feel it strongest in the slot canyons. Just east of here lies the most famous of them — Antelope Canyon, a corridor of flowing, glowing sandstone so beautiful it hardly seems real, where shafts of light pour down through the narrow slot like something out of a dream. It sits on Navajo land, and you can only enter it with a Navajo guide — and that's exactly as it should be. To the Diné it isn't a photo opportunity; it's a living, sacred place, and they are its keepers. When you go — and you should — you go as a respectful guest in someone's cathedral.
So here's what I ask you to carry out of this red country, friend, along with your photographs. Every one of these wonders — the bend, the canyons, the mesas, the light — sits in a homeland that was loved and named and held sacred long before any of us showed up with our cameras. Tread light. Take only pictures, leave only footprints, and leave the sacred places the way you found them. We're all just passing through this land. The Diné are home.
Photo: Lucas Löffler · Public domain
