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
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 live.” –Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre
Talking Water welcomes Dr. Miguel De La Torre: international scholar, documentarian, novelist, academic author, activist, and editor of “Gonna Trouble the Water - Ecojustice, Water, and Environmental Racism.” Miguel shares a bold perspective on the life-giving powers of water in our lives and how the commodification, pollution, and withholding of water is weaponized in the U.S. on communities of color. Miguel talks about shifting our viewpoints and revivifying our relationship to water. He traces the apocalyptic Eurocentric Christian worldview as detrimental to the Earth. Miguel shares insights from “Gonna Trouble the Water”, discussing environmental racism in the U.S. where the vast majority of water pollution occurs in communities of color. He shares personal reflections of walking the southern U.S. border, leaving water for migrants making the deadly journey north through the desert, and seeing border agents dumping out those life-saving waters. Miguel challenges the perspectives that fuel these oppressions. He asks the question of how American culture can widen its worldview to come back into relationship with water and the Earth as healing, life-giving, and accessible to all.
Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre – international scholar, documentarian, novelist, academic author, scholar activist and editor of 'Gonna Trouble the Water - Ecojustice, Water, and Environmental Racism.'
The focus of Dr. De La Torre’s academic pursuit is social ethics within contemporary U.S. thought, specifically how religion affects race, class, and gender oppression. Since obtaining his doctoral in 1999, he has authored over a hundred articles and published forty-five books (six of which won national awards). He presently serves as Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. A Fulbright scholar, he has taught in Australia, Columbia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, and South Africa; and lectured in Britain, Costa Rica, Cuba, Palestine, Thailand, Taiwan. Within his guild he served as the 2012 President of the Society of Christian Ethics. He is the recipient of the 2020 AAR Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2021 Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award. Within the academy, he served as a past-director to the American Academy of Religion, and served on the editorial board of JAAR. Additionally, he was the co-founder and executive director (2013-2017) of the Society of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion and the founding editor of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion. Dr. De La Torre has written numerous articles in popular media and has served on several civic organizations. Recently, he wrote the screenplay to a documentary – Trails of Hope and Terror - on immigration which has screened in over eighteen film festivals winning over seven awards. Additionally, he has written an autofiction magical realism novel titled Miguelito’s Confessions.
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. https://walking-water.org/donate/
For more info go to Walking Water website. https://walking-water.org/
