Walking Water provides a space where critical voices can come together, prioritizing life experience instead of institutional authority and inspired by imagination for a stronger more resilient future.

What the Walking Water Collective brings to water justice is uniquely visionary in regards to cultivating collaborative relations. Through sharing stories of social resilience, Walking Water brings meaningful intent and solid action aimed at dissolving silos between governing institutions and community members. Walking Water’s process of accountability helps to unravel the puzzle of why Los Angeles water policy decisions continue to undermine goals of equity and urban sustainability and why policy and planning largely remains fixed despite good-faith attempts to change, salient public outrage, and accruing urban problems as the result of climate crises. As a climate resiliency activist and student of just sustainabilities, Walking Water is one of the most admirable hubs of climate justice work in Los Angeles and the greater environs. 

Walking Water promotes dialogue, which is needed now more than ever. Even as the critical topic of water health has become more important than ever, it seems we have become divided in our perspectives and our knowledge about these issues we all face. Our perspectives must converge, just as a confluence of water from all the tributaries comes together, and this forum helps us all – agencies, organizations individuals – to make that conversation happen. Thank you for the opportunity to dive in and ride the wave, and I hope that the water we all appreciate will keep us connected as stewards.

One of the greatest learnings through the Walking Water pilgrimage was that we had in between time–between the three parts over three years to incorporate the dialogues, the learning circles, the new relationships, and to give time for those to grow between year one and two and between year two and three. That’s what I’m being moved with today, moved through the honoring of taking time to be with each other, to learn from each other, and continue to build the courage of meeting our outer actions with our inner prayers.

My experience in the 2017 leg of the Walking Waters Pilgrimage was a special experience that enabled me to see and feel Tongva Land in an entirely new and thought-provoking way. I did not expect my ancestral ties to the city of Los Angeles to cause an internalization of the ills that plague the city to impact my mental/emotional state as much as it did, but mile after mile, I caught myself walking with a heart that was heavier than my backpack. I had many moments where the emotional labor of defending my home to outsiders got the best of me and I became critical of the entire intention of Walking Water. As we walked through the city, I had the privilege of getting to know many local and non-local souls who strive for environmental justice in their communities, and that heaviness I felt began to dissipate. Walking and focusing on the future with my Paiute relatives helped me understand that the creator needed me to see extreme wealth disparities, environmental racism, and indigenous erasure in order for me to establish a new political prayer and course of action to address all of these issues.

The Walking Water Pilgrimage was a life changing event for me. It has instilled in me a need to slow down, be transparent, and move like the water when applying myself in the world around me. I have learned that I am like the water and that I am impacted like the water in all ways. I am more mindful, careful, and fragile today looking at these changes.