A kind spirit: Dixie’s Canyon Tours celebrates 10 years of hard work, giving back
Navajo Times | Krista Allen
Dixie Ellis and her daughter, Leilah Young, the owners and operators of Dixie’s Lower Antelope Canyon Tours in Jádí, Ariz., pose for a photo next to a portrait of their matriarch, the late Sally Whiterock Young.
JÁDÍ, Ariz. – Leilah Young believes her family’s successful Diné-owned business is backed by her late grandmother’s spirit.
Her family’s business, Dixie’s Lower Antelope Canyon Tours, has been in operation for more than a decade. On May 14, Young and her mother, Dixie Ellis, and their staff members they call family, celebrated their 10th anniversary of operating tours in Lower Antelope Canyon.
“Ten years is a huge deal for us,” said Young, the CEO of Dixie’s Lower Antelope Canyon Tours. “And I feel like with how far we’ve come, we kind of lead the way in showing other tour companies the importance of being supportive to our local communities.”
Dixie’s Lower Antelope Canyon Tours started from humble beginnings, said Young.
Sitting under a canopy serving as an office and a shade for their guests on May 14, 2014, Ellis and her sons (Cyrus Ellis and Stetson Ellis) started a tour business with strong purpose and ambitious plans to use their profits for social good. They started with 12 employees comprising relatives and friends.
Now, they are backing their words with actions by pouring its profits back into the Page-Lake Powell communities, donating to nearby schools, sponsoring the annual Holiday Classic (formerly the NGS Holiday Classic) and giving away scholarships to high school seniors.
‘Her spirit is here with us’
Tour companies in the Navajo Nation need licenses and permits to legitimately operate. That means it can be lengthy and competitive to obtain them. But that wasn’t the case for Dixie’s Lower Antelope Canyon Tours, which received its hiking permit shortly after starting as a business.
Young, who is Tsi’naajinii and born for Arabian, believes her grandmother, the late Sally Whiterock Young, Dixie Ellis’s mother, helped obtain the hiking permit in spirit. Sally passed on in October 2013.
“I always give her credit,” Leilah Young said. “I feel her spirit is here with us and we’re meant to do these tours. We’re meant to be here.
“She is the reason why we get to live a blessed life,” she added.
Young remembers when Dixie’s office space upgraded from a canopy to a mobile office. The employees would sit in the back underneath a shade.
“To move from there to this building, (a modern octagon-shaped office building facing east),” Young explained. “We got our keys in February of 2020, right after Covid. We got our keys to open our building. It took five years.”
Dixie’s spacious octagon-shaped office building honors Diné Bikéyah and its people. It also has a gift shop, banquette seating, a terrace, and a large portrait of the late Sally Whiterock Young that tourists worldwide get a photo of them standing next to it.
Because 10 years is momentous for Dixie’s, Leilah Young and her mom decided to redo the Sally portrait on the west wall inside the building.
“Because I wanted it to be special,” Young said of her grandmother’s portrait. “So, I reached out to a few artists.”
Diné artist Ryan Singer redid the Sally portrait, which was unveiled during Dixie’s celebration on May 14. Dixie’s also unveiled an art piece reflecting a Sally sculpture commissioned by sculptor Larry Yazzie, who specializes in stone carvings.
Read the full story in the Aug. 8, edition of the Navajo Times.
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