WATERS BECOMING

A book that relocates us within water’s story.

In 2021, we published our first booklet entitled Waters Rising–a collection of water stories from water activists who have dedicated their lives to water’s guidance. Published by LOAM, Waters Rising was a give-away and has moved through the world with the flow and prayers intended by the stories told.

Now, we are working on our second publication that will be based on the Water Learning Series: Los Angeles that we have been guiding throughout 2024. In collaboration with Kate Morales, we will offer narratives inspired by the series, all bringing art and words together to locate us and our relationships with water. The premise being that if we each are able to locate ourselves within the water story, then we are empowered to make choices that support the protection and living being that is water.

This book will also be our ‘give away’ and we estimate needing an additional $38,000 to complete the book–design, editing, printing and distribution. If you would like to be part of this with donations then please write to Kate or go directly to our donation page.

SYNOPSIS

The City of Los Angeles (situated on Tongva territory), California, is one of the most populous cities in the United States and has one of the largest metropolitan economies in the world. It is also dependent on other areas of California to provide 85% of its water, imported from three main sources: The State Water Project, The Colorado River, and the LA Aqueduct.

Walking Water has been working and collaborating in Los Angeles since 2013, beginning with the three-year pilgrimage from Mono Lake, through Payahuunadü and to Los Angeles. Our commitment to bear witness to the water’s journey from the headwaters in the Eastern Sierras down to Los Angeles via the Los Angeles Aqueduct and to raise awareness of that journey “from source to end-user” continues. In recent years, we have initiated seasonal day-long walks along the LA river, in collaboration with the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission, members of the Tongva community and Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA).

One of the key learnings of our work in Los Angeles is that there is little to no substantive collaboration and communication between the various organizations that all have a role to play in LA’s water management and decision-making. This results in fragmentation of responsibility, diminishing the resilience of an effective water community. LA residents can often feel isolated and confused about how they can stay informed and contribute their input and ideas to those in power. This isolation is also apparent in the public’s lack of a very basic understanding of where LA’s water comes from and how it gets to this mega-metropolis. As every urban areas’ infrastructure becomes increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the urgency grows for people and communities to learn, understand, and participate in water stewardship.

Over the course of 2024, Walking Water is hosting 11 “Talking Water” sessions with organizations, community projects, tribal

organizations, major utility companies, activists, organizers and leaders from LA and places impacted by LA’s water story. These conversations will highlight their critical roles in the wider regions’ water initiatives, their visions for change, and what they need to get there.

In 2025 we will publish a book which will be a harvest of those conversations– 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.

With the working title Waters Becoming, the book tells the water’s story primarily via mixed-media visual art. We are partnering with Kate Morales (artist, scribe and social cartographer), who will work 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 will be published by LOAM and we plan to publish it in late Spring 2025.

–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)