Talking Water
Talking Water is an offering by Walking Water ...
Walking Water, born from a vision received in Payahuunadü - "the place where the water flows" on the ancestral homelands of the Paiute-Shoshone people - is a project and a prayer that centers water as teacher, guide, and sacred source.
We began as a three-year pilgrimage along the natural and human-made waterways between Mono Lake and Los Angeles, CA, partnering with local and global communities to collectively bear witness to the situation of water in our world. Following the path of water from source to end-user, we witnessed histories and current realities of destruction, violence, harm and extraction. Alongside the stories of grief, we celebrated those of beauty and resilience - possibilities for the healing and regeneration of waters, landscapes, and communities.
We continue to listen to the guidance and orientation of water, for how Walking Water might serve as one tributary within a global and intergenerational movement to restore relations with waters, lands and peoples. We move with the question: what world is possible if human beings devote themselves - personally, politically, spiritually - to that which gives life? We understand how essential it is for us to recognize and honor the leadership of Indigenous peoples and communities of color who have been protecting the waters and the lands from extraction and exploitation for hundreds of years -whose life ways, languages and cultures offer profound teachings for how to grow into right relationship.
A commitment to healing waters asks each of us to find our role in movements that struggle to dismantle oppressive systems that commodify waters, lands and peoples in pursuit of power and profit. And as we carry the dream of justice for waters and peoples alike, we strive to uplift and support those individuals and communities who are "acupuncture points" of healing and possibility, actively living towards that more beautiful and liberated world.
For more info go to: https://walking-water.org
To support the work of Walking Water go to: https://walking-water.org/donate/
Walking Water is a fiscally sponsored project of Weaving Earth
Banner photo by Teena Pugliese
Episodes
52 episodes
with Nina Gordan-Kirsch
Nina Gordon-Kirsch is a river lover who walked 240 miles from her home town in Oakland, CA up into the Sierra Nevada mountains to trace where her drinking water came from. She is now working on an educ...
with Western Landowners Alliance (Lesli Allison & Morgan Wagoner)
In this episode of Talking Water we are joined by Lesli Allison, CEO, and Morgan Wagoner Western Water Program Director of The Western Landowners Alliance to discuss the shifts, challenges and win...
with Justine Evans
In Talking Water with renowned wildlife cinematographer Justine Evans, we reflect and dive into Justine's connection to Water. From early childhood memories of playing in the River Thames, to breaking into the nature-documentary...
with Accelerate Resilience L.A.
If you look at the work happening in LA with water advocacy, especially in how it relates to climate resilience, you’ll find Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA). Join this inspiring and activating conversat...
with Lake to Lake Team
“The walks have been such a good movement. We’ve made a lot of progress. The walks have been a really good bridge for bringing people together and for us being able to share and connect and help people be more aware. It’s helped us at the tr...
with Ethan Hirsch-Tauber and Philip Munyasia
“We have seen a lot of conflict arising from one community to another because of sharing this water resource. The universe communicated to me when I saw how the soil reacts, because there’s not enough water, how plants are suffering—they’re ...
with Li An Phoa
“I saw when all the relationships in and along the river were healthy and in balance, the emergent property is drinkability for everyone, health for everyone, and beauty for us to admire and be immersed in.” –Li An Phoa We we...
with Felicia Marcus and Liz Crosson
“What’s the cost of inaction, and how do we help people afford what we need to invest? How do we convey the preciousness and precariousness of water? How do we get folks to collaborate versus compete?” –Felicia Marcus, Fellow at Stanford...
with Konda Mason
“When will we become aware? What will it take? I believe the upside of the challenges we are facing right now is that it’s forcing us to say, ‘That is not the story.’ If ‘that’ is not the story, then what is? Who am I in the story, and who a...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Eleven with Tina Calderon, Teri Red Owl & Kyndall Noah
“I really believe that the more people that come together, that are thinking this way, and that are working on solutions, that's what it’s going to take to get us to reimagining what our future is going to be and what LA looks like in the fu...
with Melissa McGill, Kate Morales & Debra Scacco
“As an artist, a huge pivot point for me in this work has been to understand that what I once thought of as materials, as object, as resource, are actually collaborators, are actually relations.” –Kate MoralesIn this conversation,...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Ten with Andy Lipkis
“We need to ask: how do we honor place? How do we embody justice? How do we regenerate life? How do we grow participation? How do we foster resilience?” –Andy LipkisWelcome to the Water Learning Series: Los Angeles. Throughout 202...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Nine with Kaytlynn Johnston & Zacarías Bernal
“In my imagination, we need to decommodify everything natural…No one should have to pay for access to clean water…These are all basic human rights. We need to imagine that we can come back to that…We need to learn what reciprocity means with...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Eight with Friends of the LA River & Heal the Bay
“The river is the reason why LA was able to be here in the first place. It’s the origin story of Los Angeles. It’s the mother of Los Angeles in many ways.” –Candice Dickens-Russell, President & CEO of Friends of the LA RiverWe...
with Mike Prather
“Owens Lake was the largest emitter of dust from one place in the United States…It [Owens Lake] disappeared in the mid-1920s. The water didn’t come on for the dust project until 2001. For nearly eighty years, the people up here–families, eve...
with the Watershed Association
“What does your water come from? If we know the answer to that, that’s the first step towards conservation…Then we start to connect with that source. We are water. It’s running through us. No one can own the water. We have it for a time..”
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Seven with LA Dept. of Water and Power & Met. Water District of S. CA
“Agencies like MWD and DWP are really working on our transparency and trying to bring in different voices into our processes… I think it’s important as we need to build trust in what we’re doing and the investments we need to make locally. I...
with We the People of Detroit
“When you know the historical legacy of systemic racism that’s still baked into housing policies, insurance policies, red-lining, things of that nature, then you have to understand that the fight we’re fighting in Detroit is connected to a g...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Six with Council for Watershed Health
“Redesign LA puts people at the forefront. Those projects that are being funded are not coming from the cities…These are the needs in our community.”–Carlos Moran, Sr. Program Manager, from the Council for Watershed Health
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Five with US Army Corps of Engineers
“What we can bring to the future of the river and urban waterways is engineering with nature…Engineering with nature is where we are trying to use more natural ways of solving the problem… working in unison with natural processes.” –...
with Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre
“Water is life…Not only does it give life. It is life. When we look at water as a thing, as an object, as a commodity that we can profit off of, if you control water, you control life. You control who gets to live and who does not get to liv...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Four with Urbano Strategies
“We believe that authentic community engagement is really the key to creating and cultivating sustainable projects that are going to be healthier for the residents and create conditions that are more livable…’Direct to Community Engagement’ ens...
with Erik Ohlsen
“The wisdom of earth is miraculous, unrelenting, infinite, mysterious. We’ll never know everything about how natural ecosystems evolve…When I walk into the world with one foot in wonder, looking at grasslands, forests, and watersheds, my fav...
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Three with LA Waterkeeper
“Water is one of the biggest drivers in California of climate change…because our water comes from very far away. In LA, we import our water hundreds of miles–over mountains, over deserts, over farmland from the Colorado River, from the Owens...