LAKE TO LAKE 2025
10 years on…the walk continues…
In 2015, after three years of preparations, we set off on what would become an epic journey from Mono Lake, through Payahuunadü and Los Angeles, completing in Long Beach …
We were brought together to walk with the waters through vision received by Kate Bunney and shared by many in Payahuunadü – our intention being to contribute to an ever-growing Indigenous-led movement that calls for the restoration of our relations with water. In 2025, ten years later, our intention is to mark that initial journey and all that has happened since then with the Lake to Lake 2025 walk…
Lake to Lake
Retracing our path from Mono Lake to Owens Lake/Patsiata, in celebration of the original journey and in witness to what has and has not changed in this iconic California water story.
After receiving permission from the Big Pine Paiute Tribal Council in 2013, it took the Core team – co-founder and guardian Gigi Coyle, Shay Sloan and Kate Bunney – another 2 years to organize, plan, apply for permits, fundraise and invite others to join us for the first leg of the Walking Water pilgrimage. Essential to that preparation was doing the work ourselves. How would each of us show up in right relations with water, right relations with vision, right relations with our ancestors? The core team were all of European descent so the choice to adopt the word ‘Pilgrimage’ asked each of us to deeply understand, acknowledge, and inhabit our lineage. Alan Bacock, then Water Coordinator with the Big Pine Paiute tribe, joined the core team in year 2 when Shay departed. Many others, including Kathy Bancroft (Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and Elder of Lone Pine Paiute), Harry Williams (Bishop Paiute tribe), Monty Bengochia (Bishop Paiute tribe) and the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission held us to that work. We collaborated closely with Andy Lipkis, Founder of TreePeople and now Founder and Project Executive of Accelerate Resilience L.A.
On September 1st 2015, receiving the last essential permit to walk just hours before we were to start, we welcomed 40 water activists, policy makers, tribal representatives, artists, nonprofit leaders, young and old in Lee Vining. Walking from Mono Lake to Owens Lake/Patsiata in 2015, then from Owens Lake/Patsiata to the Cascades in 2016 and arriving in Long Beach in 2017, we released the prayers along with the waters that had been
gathered from many places around the world and carried along the whole path we walked.
Ten years later, we are a small and mighty collective held by Krystyna Jurzykowski, Justine Epstein and Kate, with Gigi and Orland Bishop as our Guardians. Our collaboration with the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission is strong, and we still walk deeply with Kathy Bancroft, Alan Bacock and Andy Lipkis, as well as many other organizations in Payahuunadü, Los Angeles and further afield. We have continued to organize shorter walks and gatherings in Payahuunadü and Los Angeles, created Talking Water, an on-going podcast as well as a Water Learning series: Los Angeles …and Waters Rising: Guidance for our Times – a book published by Loam in 2021.
The core of our work is still to continue to contribute to the ever-growing Indigenous-led movement which holds water at the center of life – as guide and teacher. We walk with curiosity, committed to asking questions – of ourselves and one another, acknowledging the wide-spread injustices in water management, and at the same time, we walk with the constant reimagining of our relationship with water, lands and peoples. We have been humbled, challenged, and held accountable. We have been inspired, offered trust, and we have learned much.
And now – ten years from those first footsteps – we plan to re-trace our first journey from Mono Lake to Patsiata/Owens Lake.
- It will be a time of completion, a time of healing and remembering, a time of celebration and grieving, a time of responding to what is happening in the world and a time to bear witness on behalf of our next generations to that which is deeply threatened and quickly disappearing.
- It will be a time of honoring these sister lakes, their existence so deeply and persistently threatened, and asking for their restoration.
- It will be a time of acknowledging the many injustices experienced by the original peoples – the Nüümmü/Newe – of these waters and lands.
- It will be a time of joining the call for meaningful, committed and action-oriented dialogue between Los Angeles, as majority landowner in Payahuunadü, and all local inhabitants.
- It will be a time to ask for sacred lands and waters to be returned to the Nüümmü/Newe peoples.
- It will be a time for each of us to explore what it truly means to be in relationship with water and to realign our actions with that which gives life.
We will set off on this Lake to Lake walk in September 2025.
Over the next months, we will be sending out invitations to join us – by walking with us or in simultaneous walks in and for your own local watershed, convening with some of the saline lakes under threat, volunteering with the team, contributing funds and in-kind equipment …. And the many other ways that will emerge.
We estimate the whole walk to cost $200,000 – this includes stipends for team and Indigenous consultants, equipment, travel, permits, food, social media and insurance … If you are in a position to contribute or pledge, or donate equipment please contact Kate to explore what that would look like or please visit our donation page.
Flier design by Querido Galdo
WAYS TO SUPPORT
**We estimate the whole walk to cost $200,000 – this includes stipends for team and Indigenous consultants, equipment, travel, permits, food, social media and insurance … If you are in a position to contribute or pledge, or donate equipment please contact Kate to explore what that would look like or please visit our donation page.
**We are actively looking for in-kind donations. If you or friends/family have equipment you no longer use and/or a business that can contribute equipment or food, please contact Kate.
**Do you have a skill that could be useful to the preparation of the walk and are able to offer some hours? Contact Kate.
**Do you know of Foundations/grant makers that could support this endeavor? Contact Kate.
**Would you like to be part of a logistics/kitchen team during the walk? Contact Kate.
**We will keep updating this page as new info comes, so please do keep coming back.
COLLABORATORS
We define collaborators as those we have been deeply working with for some years, who work together as decision makers and shapers of the Walking Water offerings. Collaborators are those we feel guided by, who advise us, teach us and who themselves work tirelessly for a just and equitable water present and future.
Kathy Bancroft
PARTNERS
We define partners for Lake to Lake 2025 as those organizations and individuals that are working on water issues both in Payahuunadü and Los Angeles and who have an impact on the present and future of water in this region. All partners are asked to contribute to the walk in ways that serve – including monetary donations, logistics, networking and publicity and walking. As partners we have an opportunity to deepen our relations and build common ground.
