WATERS BECOMING

A book that relocates us within water’s story.

In 2025 we published Waters Becoming, a harvest of the conversations in the Water Learning Series– a gathering of our collective intelligence and creativity that represents a journey of deepening relations between water, place and people. Our intention is to locate ‘ourselves’ within the Los Angeles water story. To “become located” begins the path of relinquishing the narrative of “other,” “them” or “elsewhere” to a deeper understanding and liberation within what is a complicated and sometimes unintelligible shared water story. Ultimately, it is about revealing our interconnection and interdependence and the ‘becoming’ of that relationship.

The book tells the water’s story primarily via mixed-media visual art. We have worked in partnership with Kate Morales (artist, scribe and social cartographer), who worked

with material gathered by the river including plant-based pigments, natural earth paint, and the river water itself, collaborating with the materials not as resources but as relations. The artwork is informed and accompanied by keywords, quotes and concepts offered by the guests of the series who represent some of the most influential and vital organizations and citizens throughout the Los Angeles region. Mapping the confluence of the living land and the people of the LA water story, the book is an invitation to the reader to locate themselves in relation to the biocultural ecosystem of Los Angeles, Southern California as well as their own local watersheds. The book is published by LOAM and is a give-away.

–Photos by Peter Bennett–

While this book has been inspired by the Los Angeles water story, that story has also been determined and shaped by colonial thought systems. With the prevalence of those systems in so many parts of the world, this is a water map that will be relevant to many. 

For residents of LA, the book will offer an important opportunity to engage with those who represent and influence the community’s relations with water. It is an opportunity to more deeply understand and map the decision-making structures and water impacts of this city, to build relationships with those who are building more just and ecologically balanced systems, and to offer occasions for collective organizing and action.

Guests/Inspirers

Tina Calderon (Gabrielino Tongva, Chumash and Yoeme)

Annie Mendoza (Gabrieleno-Tongva)

Teri Red Owl (Bishop Paiute Tribe Nuumu from Payahuunadu)

Kyndall Noah (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma)

Andy Lipkis (Founder & Project Executive, Accelerate Resilience L.A.)

Kelly Shannon McNeill (Associate Director, LA Waterkeeper)

Ben Harris (Staff Attorney, LA Waterkeeper)

Jesse De La Cruz (Founder, Urbano Strategies)

Megan Whalen (Continuing Authorities Program Manager, Army Corps of Engineers)

Hunter Merritt (Social Scientist, Collaboration and Public Participation Center of Expertise, Army Corps of Engineers)

Carlos Moran (Executive Director, North East Trees)

Liz Crosson (Sustainability, Resiliency and Innovation Officer, Metropolitan Water District)

David Pettijohn (Director of Water Resources, Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power)

Kayleigh Wade (Senior Manager of Outreach, Heal the Bay)

Candice Dickens-Russell (President and CEO of Friends of the LA River)

Lizette Padilla (Bookstore Assistant, Tia Chuca’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore)

Zacarías Bernal (Program Assistant with Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore)

Kaytlynn Johnston (Bishop Paiute Tribe)