Canyon de Chelly is one of the most impressive places in the Southwest. Its vertical canyon walls tower 1,000 feet high as the Rio de Chelly winds through its ancient walls. And, it preserves nearly 5,000 years of Indigenous history, from the ancestral Puebloan people who built cliff dwellings to the Navajo who still live there today.
But, for most modern-day Navajo people, visiting some of the canyon’s most sacred sites is taboo. Guests who want to visit the inner-depths of the canyon have to go with a Navajo guide.
Why? Alastair Lee Bitsóí, a Diné journalist, says these sites are essentially graves.
Bitsóí decided to go into some of these sacred sites to report a piece for Smithsonian Magazine about a group of researchers and archaeologists who are working to preserve this history by mapping it for the first time using lidar technology.
Bitsóí says he felt conflicted about covering it — and visiting these normally off-limits sites. His Diné identity shaped his approach from the start — beginning with what to call the holiest site in the canyon.
Full conversation
ALASTAIR LEE BITSÓÍ: In this story, we identify the complex as Tséyaakiní, in part because I am a Dinė reporter or journalist. So I chose Tséyaakiní as the word to describe Mummy Cave. I felt like reclaiming the word “Mummy Cave” was problematic to me, and I felt like, well, I don’t know what the other tribal languages are for this site, but at least from the Navajo perspective, it was identified as Tséyaakiní.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so Canyon de Chelly I think a lot of Arizonans have heard of like, people know that this kind of miraculous thing exists. And if you have read about it or gone there or thought about going there, you’ll know that like one of the things about it is that you have to go with a Navajo guide to see most of the canyon at all. And it’s because there are places like this that are sacred, that are holy, that are kind of off-limits to anyone, right?
BITSÓÍ: Going into the canyon, it is to like Tséyaakiní or Mummy Cave, it requires four wheel drive. It’s a sandy wash, and there’s sensitivity of the site to visiting it. But also the approach of the researchers and what they were trying to what they were trying to, what they are still trying to investigate there or find or mitigate at this sensitive cultural site.
And so for me, I guess having worked in conservation and as a writer in different spaces, particularly when it came to Bears Ears National Monument, I learned right away how energies of a landscape can impact a person, good or bad. And I ran clearances through my parents, my family and then some, and an elder that I admire and look up to for consultation. And, of course I was warned, you got to be careful. And I took their points of view into consideration before I decided to go with the story.
But I learned in the process how this kind of story of history, but also it’s a grave site. And so, like how do you approach that, but how do you tell the science of the architecture of the site?
GILGER: What are the cultural beliefs? You talked about the way in which you did not approach this reporting lightly. Why is it that for most Navajos and most people from other tribes around that area, this site is off limits? Like you do not go to these places, right?
BITSÓÍ: But for me, as a Dinė person and how I was raised, and again, this is not for all Dinė people’s perspectives either. It’s just the way I was brought up. You be careful at these types of sites, and when I’m around such sites where there’s graves, like I got to carry ash, coal ash or wood fire ash, as a solution to mitigate exposures of the dead. At least that’s what I’m taught. And I believe or experience so far in this type of reporting.
That’s just one method, I guess, of harm reduction. And the Navajo experience of reporting on this type of topic, but also like being around such a sensitive area. And there’s other protocols, not every Dinė follows these protocols, some just go up there and climb, you know. So like those were sensitivities or layers that I had to figure out on this journey. And I stood below the area of the site where we camped out instead of, like, climbing up to the site.
And we talked a lot about firsting, like the idea of firsting, like, “oh, this is our discovery.” And you know, I push back on like, “why don’t you just leave the site and let nature, mother earth take it?”
But then the photographer ended up saying, “well, this is my point of view of like, it’s a treasure. Like I want my children to know about the sophistication of their builders who made this up, because it’s something to marvel at.”
GILGER: Right, so let me ask you about that, because what you’re getting at there is so interesting. It’s that tension between what these researchers are doing there and your reporting on what they’re doing, which is about preservation, which is about, you know, protecting this area from climate change, from erosion. You know, like making sure that it’s there in the future for others to understand and enjoy or appreciate. But there’s this kind of taboo involved, right? Like you wrote that you felt very conflicted coming away from it.
BITSÓÍ: Yeah, I am, and even when I see this piece I still feel conflict of well, I went through that. And so like there’s a lot of relief to get it out there and publish.
GILGER: So let me ask you about what you did afterward, right, because you weren’t sure of the protocol when you were reporting it. And you wrote that you visited a Dinė medicine man, essentially afterwards. Right, a cultural practitioner to try to learn how to heal yourself from this experience so that you wouldn’t get sick. He told you, you would get sick, right?
BITSÓÍ: Yeah, and I know that like, the potential exposure to such energies would impact my well-being, and it did. I mean, I also knew that going into the assignment, the editors were understanding. I was like, well, I’m feeling sick from this site. Like I think I was feeling sick or nauseous from the conflict myself, but also just like, wow. I was eating around this site that is basically a graveyard, and I’m eating food with them and they’re exposing me is what the healer told me.
I just followed the protocols of getting cleansed again from the healer. And of course, he told me, if you keep reporting on such similar topics without actual proper protocol, you’re going to continue to harm yourself. Now, I have now learned about how to approach it, but also maybe reject similar stories in the future.
GILGER: Right, so that was what I was going to ask you lastly, Alastair, which is sort of being so conflicted, going in and coming out of this, trying to kind of cleanse yourself, heal yourself from it because of these things you’ve now witnessed. Like would you do reporting like this and in the future as a Dinė writer? And what does that mean for people from that culture documenting it?
BITSÓÍ: I think that’s a hard line to like walk. I don’t know. For me, I’ve grown as a human and I realized I know where to put up my boundaries and the type of reporting. And of course, I’m fascinated with history. And like, I love history and I hope this piece does some sort of reclamation. Or as they say, rematriation of some of our stories and connections and point of view.
Right now, I feel like I’m going to take a break from this kind of reporting. My spirit shell being as, and mental is very aware of how energies, good or bad, can impact me. And I guess I’m a more sensitive human being like not only to the landscape but to my reporting and storytelling.
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