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 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, everyone, the wildlife–they were choking on dust.” –Mike Prather, environmentalist and conservationist in the Owens Valley/Payahuunadü
Join us for this special edition of Talking Water, featuring our guest Mike Prather. Mike is an environmental activist and conservationist who has advocated for returning water to Owens Lake/Patsiata and the Lower Owens River. He shares his personal story about fighting for the things you love. For Mike, his love has been the unique and majestic natural beauty of Owens Valley/Payahuunadü where he has lived for nearly 45 years.
Mike was instrumental in forming the Owens Valley Committee which was heavily involved in rectifying damages done by Los Angeles to the valley’s water supply and ecosystem. Mike recalls a time when the once massive Owens Lake/Patsiata was completely dry and a health hazard for residents because of alkaline dust. Mike remembers the first moments of water being added to the lake again as a dust control measure. He shares the awe of seeing thousands of shorebirds return to the lake as the waters return. Mike offers listeners a vantage point into a life of defending the sacred–the inspiration, the successes, and the trials.
Mike Prather
Mike has lived in Inyo County since 1972, starting in Death Valley National Park (then Death Valley National Monument) in the 1970s, and later in Lone Pine in 1980. “My focus has been on the desert, as well as the Sierra, with particular interests in water and wildlife issues. For many years, I worked on passage of the California Desert Protection Act and the Inyo/Los Angeles Water Agreement with its Lower Owens River Project. Currently much of my energy is directed toward the massive wildlife return associated with the Los Angeles Owens Lake Dust Project, and also possible increased protection of the Alabama Hills through a federal designation within the BLM’s National Landscape Conservation System. My interests within Friends of the Inyo are seeking sustainability, increasing diversity and spreading FOI’s good works into the southern Owens Valley.”
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/
