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 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 welcome Li An Phoa for a powerful conversation on following the call of water as a teacher and centering water for the health of our communities and world. Phoa, the author of Drinkable Rivers: How the River Became My Teacher, shares a poignant story of the first time she drank from the wild and healthy Rupert River in the Canadian subarctic. This “sip” was a catalyst for transforming her life. She realized through her relationship with this river, which later became polluted, that drinkable rivers are an indicator of a healthy society, benefiting human and more-than-human communities.
Li An shares her work with the organization Drinkable Rivers in service of river health, organizing river walks around the world and mobilizing people to act for the healing and well-being of watersheds.
About Li An Phoa
Li An Phoa works towards a world with drinkable rivers and founded the charity Drinkable Rivers to raise awareness and to weave this with mobilising people for action. She organises river walks, citizen science and action communities, like Mayors for Drinkable Rivers. Li An walked over 18,500km for drinkable rivers and a documentary film has been made of her 1.000-kilometre walk along the Meuse River. The book Drinkable Rivers: How the River Became My Teacher was published in English in September 2023. Most recently, Li An completed the Thames walk, a 4-week journey from the source in the Cotswolds to the mouth in the North Sea and the walk along the Berkel, a Rhine/IJssel tributary. www.drinkablerivers.org
Hosted by: Kate Bunney
Produced & Edited by: Anne Carol Mitchell
Intro music by: Mamuse 'River Run Free' - featuring Walter Strauss
