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
Talking Water
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Two with Andy Lipkis
“I’m telling these stories, because change is within our power. It’s within our reach.”
–Andy Lipkis
Welcome to the year-long Water Learning Series: Los Angeles, where we will host 11 conversations with organizations, community projects, tribal organizations, activists, organizers, and leaders from L.A. and places impacted by L.A.’s water story.
We welcome Andy Lipkis to session two of the series. Andy is a visionary and pioneer in urban and community forestry and watershed restoration in Los Angeles, as well as the founder and project executive of Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA). In this conversation, Andy shares his understanding and vision for how Los Angeles could be water sufficient and why it is not. Through his decades of experience working for climate resiliency, he discusses how the legacy of pollution, the removal of LA’s living infrastructure, and the illiteracy and bureaucracy surrounding the potentials for water harvesting and waste water reclamation have led to L.A. importing nearly all its water. Andy tells hopeful stories from other cities in L.A. county and mega cities in Australia and offers solutions for shifting L.A.'s water story to one of healing and abundance through community action, adequate funding, and education.
The conversation shifts to a visual presentation about a community engagement and collaborative planning tool to support living infrastructure projects in L.A. called Living Infrastructure Field Kit, developed in collaboration with ARLA, municipalities, community-based organizations, regional engineering firms, and Spherical, a strategic design and integrative research studio. David McConville, Co-Creative Director of Spherical, visually demonstrates the Field Kit, which shows what’s possible when adopting a living systems approach to healing the water and land in L.A. through free resources and an open source,map-based software platform for collaborative project design.
Andy Lipkis has spent his life crowdsourcing climate resilience, both coordinating flood emergency disaster relief and addressing long-term causes and vulnerabilities. At age 18, he founded TreePeople, and served as its president from 1973 to 2019. Lipkis is a pioneer of Urban and Community Forestry and Urban Watershed Management, the principles of which have spread across the world. He has consulted for Los Angeles, Seattle, Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and other megacities, helping plan for climate resilience and adaptation. With climate change impacts already creating a chronic emergency for cities around the world, Andy’s work has demonstrated promising new ways for individuals, communities and government agencies to collaboratively reshape urban tree canopy, soil, and water infrastructure to save lives and grow a more livable future.
After retiring from TreePeople in 2019, Andy launched Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA), a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, to inspire and enable people and local governments to equitably accelerate climate resilience in Los Angeles.
Hosted by: Kate Bunney
Produced & Edited by: Anne Carol Mitchell
Intro music by: Mamuse 'River Run Free' - featuring Walter Strauss
If you feel inspired by Talking Water please consider a donation - our work relies on the community. You can donate here.
For more info go to Walking Water website
