As a teenager, I lived on the boundary of Canyon De Chelly National Monument in the Navajo Nation near the Arizona and New Mexico border. The red rock canyon system extends like fingers outwards from the Chuska Mountains, carving deep into a broad plateau. It ultimately converges into one canyon as it emerges into the Chinle Valley nearly 2,000 feet below and more than 25 miles from where it started.
Multiple civilizations of Indigenous people have called the canyon home thanks to its abundance of water, fertile soils, and fortress-like impenetrability from intruders. Ancestral structures, burial sites, plants, animals, and pictographs are scattered across Canyon De Chelly and hold immense significance to Native people today. Navajo people still live and farm in the canyon...