man: our people have lived here for thousands of years and not just survived, but really thrived. different man: the valley was plumbed. the more you spread water, the more life you have. different man: when creeks and rivers and ditches and everything was channelized and it didn't flow around freely like it used to, that definitely impacted a lot of the ground, the soil, and the

way this place is. different man: the truth is, millions of people are relying on a water supply because we've created these big cities in places that really aren't sustainable. there are unresolved water-rights issues that our people are having to deal with. nobody knows the bigger story and how actions in los angeles end up impacting those in the owens valley. announcer: this program was made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation, a margaret, a. cargill philanthropy. [rooster crows] woman: this area is just--

think it's just in my blood. i think i always knew something that's just coded in your dna where you should live. on a crisp morning when it's just the sun coming up, you know, you just-- this is home. you know, this is where you belong. where my house is, where all these homes are right here, it was just regular landscape where all the animals grazed what we needed and what we, you know, everything's allow. dried up. this iprobably what l.a. would look like if they didn't have water, if they didn't have their sprinkling systems and golf courses, but you're taking it from our land, and you're drying up o land even worse than it could ever be. i actually, instead of putting my water in the sink, i put it in a tub, and i would rinse and rinse, and it's saved water, you know, helped us save on water. everybody has a job

here. ha ha! [rooster crows] [turkey gobbles] man: these little does here, they're due here at the end of the month. the brown one's sandy, and that white one over there is dash. [chicks chirping] i make sure these get water twice a day. oh, yeah. you need water to survive. everything needs water. this is our irrigation water that we get. we get it for the summertime, comes in april, early april sometimes, till the end of october, and then sometimes it's on. sometimes it's off, and, depending on what's being done down the line, you know, it fills up or not, so i always come out here every morning, make sure i have irrigation water. as you see, it goes all the way across this area into r goat pen, past there, make sure my peach trees are being

watered. a couple years back, we didn't have irration water for the whole season, was because there was water pipes that weren't fixedhat kept leaking. that's when i lost all my tomato plants, because i was planning on doing tomato plants to hit market and then irrigation shut off and never came back on. man: this is where a majority of the water is leaking out for the irrigation line. different man: it was the main pipe that fed our system. the amount that we were getting declined slowly and slowly over the years until 2016, when all of a sudden, the main pipe that was damaged ruptured, and then all of a sudden, we weren't getting any water at all. that's leaving the system. different man: the responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of that pipe wasn't ours. it was the department of water and power. there was a struggle trying to get them to come to the table and listen when all we wanted them to do was fix this pipe

that was their responsibility. i think that it really kind of shined a bad light on what was happening with us. thank the powers that be that they fixed that pipe right after that, and i'm sure a lot of it had to do with negative publicity, but it worked, and we have our water again. we're continuing to give people an example of what can be. you know, this isn't a place that's dead and hopeless. i think that people need to see a relationship with water. woman: by and large, californians, i think, have little understanding to where their water comes from, how it's stored, how it's delivered, that the flows and the rivers are highly controlled and that the lake levels are highly controlled to manage our water supply, si think increasing that

understanding and connection to the water would go a long way towards getting people to feel more passionate about protecting these resources. when it comes to developing resilient and balanced approaches to how we're going to be adapting to climate change, native americans have been thinking about that forever, and so including those voices io the conversation right now, i think, is essential. man: our people have lived here for thousands of years and not just survived, but really thrived. though we never really got a whole lot of water in the form of rain from the sky, we have a whole bunch from e sierra nevada, where the snow would come down on the mountains and then it would warm up in the season. water would trickle down, flow into the creeks, and the creeks

would continue down the mountain ways, and our people just went, "wow. look at this is great resource," and were able to then utilize it, seeing how much water was available from the snow melt, from the runoff, ancreated a really extensive ditch network toove water throughout the land as slowly as possible so that the more the water traveled, the more it absorbed into the land, and that then helped raise up the water table and provide for the plants and the animals. man: this little, rock house, these are how we live. that might be a grinding stone in the middle. you could grind your seeds. i feel like i'm at home.

yeah. this is an ancient irrigation ditch dug by my people. i can't figure out how old they are. i'm figuring a thousand years. if you imagine an ancient irrigation ditch, it would look exactly like this, with the water flowing. you got all the plants growing by it. think of all the life it's creating when it goes down there. well, the other, the ditch would run into this. this is part of it. it is an ancient irrigation ditch, this part. 1,400 years ago, they had a 200-year drought, so they had to learn to spread the water because we always knew water was life when they made these ancient irrigation ditches. the more you spread water, the more life you have. that's why we say, "water is life," and my

people have always known that. the entire valley was a garden, and so as you spread the water, your garden grew--all the plants, animals, bugs, everything. the valley was plumbed. first white guy we've ever seen was in 1855 or '56, and that was von schmidt. he was doing townships and the border of california and nevada. after a while, he realized--every time he crossed one of those ditches, he said, "these are manmade." on his journal, he stard writing indian ditches. then in 1859, captain davidson came through because he was looking for horse thieves, and he started writing in his journals about indian ditches, and by the time we get up by round valley and bishop, he compared them to modern engineering because, he just said, they're massive. they're all over. we even have one ditch for about a half-mile. bacock: it wasn't until 1859

that we started seeing people actually stay and sit within the owens valley and settle here, and with that, it really did change the dynamic for our people. land was no longer able to be accessed in ways that were done in the past, and water was all of a sudden being used by someone else, and they were saying it was theirs to use and couldn't be used for other purposes. l.a. had dreams of being bigger, and the one limitation to that was water. man: mulholland came into the country, or surveyed it, and said, "oh, this is a lot of water we could use in l.a." bacock: when l.a. came into the owens valley, ey diverted the owens river, and they totall changed the course of that river way into an aqueduct system that then ledo los angeles, but then los angeles

wanted more water and created a second barrel to the aqueduct to be able to double the capacity of the water that could go down into los angeles but didn't necessarily have that water going, and so they began a groundwater-pumping program. >> pure, fresh water in abundance. hayden: when you turn the faucet to get a glass of water, that water could be coming from a local source, or it could be coming from a source hundreds of miles away, so we've developed this reall intricat complex system of reservoirs and canals and aqueducts to take water from its source and deliver it to where it's needed. we depend on two primary sources of water-- surface water and groundwater, and so surface water is the water you can see that flows into rivers and creeks and lakes and reservoirs, and then there's groundwater, which is the water you can't see, and that's water that's stored

underground. it's found in the pores and spaces between our soil and rocks. these aquifers--that's what they're called--are filled with water that comes off of farms, from rain, from rivers. the groundwater actually provides, on average, about 40% of our water that we use in california. bacock: big pi creek used to flow down to the valley, and then it would just fan out into the valley, and part of that was due to the network of ditches that our people had made which were continued to be utilized. now big pine creek is siphoned into one waterway which is moving quickly down into the owen's river. los angeles owns more land in the owens valley than it has within its city limits. here today we're still dealing with that. there are unresolved water-rights issues that our people are having to deal with.

[creaking] man: i sit on the owens valley indian water commission. i was elected by my tribe to help with the issues with water, and i'm also on the environmental advisory board. it's endless for me, my passion for water. when i got my job as a water operator, it meant a lot to me. "paiute" means water, our language, paiute. this is the payahuunadu. it's the land of flowing water. it just all, like, really sunk in to me, like, "this is what i want to do." i try my best to be there for people, to provide them water, do whatever i can. this is the irrigation pond, so

this water comes from the creek, and the creek water comes from the glacier we have up there. we have the southernmost glacier in the united states, so it comes down into that intake valves box, and it goes all the way down to supply the needs of the reservation. this was built, supposedly, mid forties. it goes all the way down, and then, i mean, all these laterals that go from these standpipes down, i mean, they've been here since then. this is where dwp read, so i read off of the staff gauge, and, like, our allocation is, like, really 0.83, so right now,e're a little short, but according to them, it's not. they'd rather go off this instead of going off of what's visible, you know, so i just

read that staff gauge there and document it every day. oh, man. how i feel like this was our water, like, first in time, first in line. i mean, i'm a firm believer in that, you know, and it's not like we sold it or anything, you know? we used it for watering and gardening, and they just want to keep pumping, though. they're taking so much from big pine, they just got to be more conservative, you know? stop the pumping. like i said, we got points on our reservation where the groundwater table is the 80 feet down. we're going to be dried up to nothing. it's just, it's unfortunate that, you know, being taken advantage of, you know, not just tribal members or reservations. it's the whole towns, you know, the townpeople and everybody else, too, you know? what's going to happen in 7 generations down the road?

yribarren: this is chaos. he's an angel. thfolks come in '72. dad, he always worked for somebody else, had enough money for a down payment. this is mine all the way down to that lake. it's all a city lease. if each ranch has different allotments. you do the best you can with that water they give you. well they pretty much got their thumb on top of you,you'll do what you're told. in other words, your board of directors down there want to tell you what to do and how to do it. they don't have a clue what's happening out here. they do know the water goes to l.a. this down here

must've been a swamp or something because, like, this ranch when they started farming this country, there's ditches that go across it. they've drained it. it was too wet, the the valley floor. they say it was full of mosquitoes and stuff in the summer, and any place you want to look along these foothills, you'll find ditches. the indians did it, so don't cut these paiute short. they work. what do you think, chaos? you want to go outside and go potty? that was rough. they say they're ming water, and i said, "no, you're not. you're raping this country. you're past destroying it," i said, "but it's ok. mother nature, she'll get even someday." she always does. sure seems like it. true.

hayden: we've engineered the system to meet the needs of humans along the way but have completely detached ourselves from what that means for communities like native american tribes as well as the broader environment. our frastructure was designed to kind of solve problems as they emerge. we've created this kind of mishmash of reservoirs and canals and aqueducts that were solving individual problems that were important at any particular time. what we have now is a system that's really disconnected and fragmented and completely moved away from the natural way that our environment would work in the past. bacock: and los angeles coming in really changed our way of

life, and so our relationship with land and our relationship with water changed as a result, as well. miller: this area has been referred to as all kinds of different names. it's a park. it's a community garden. we have a farmers market area. it's been referred to as an irrigation demonstration project. after the wer comes off of the contoured land area where we've kind of changed it just slightly for the water to flow slowly, it goes into this water-retention swale here. this swale was designed along an existing contour line. we didn't have to design this one or construct it in any way, so what we did was, we ran a ditch along a contour line, and you make a berm on the opposite side of the ditch. you mulch the entire ditch. that mulch

comes out of the ditch and goes over the berm. being that it's on a contour line, the land is leveled out in the ditch, so you want it to flow slowly, and then with the aid of the mulch that you put in the ditch, it's really going to slow it down to where the water doesn't even look like it's really moving. some of the classes in permaculture where you learn how to w work with water and how to manage , they teach y about the 3 s's, which are spread it, slow it, sink it. if the water looks like it's not moving at all, that's probably a good thing.

when we flood the field, it fills up everything down to the water-retention swale. on the other side of the swale, we have some other areas that are grassy and have fruit trees and things like that. we have another series of irrigation valves on the other side. i've always gardened in beds and row crops and everything, and i always knew how important soil health was for growing a garden, but it didn't really cross my mind for this chunk of land that we were gointo be, hopefully, changing. as i was looking at the soil underneath what we were doing as things started growing here, the health of the soil was improving. the soil was changing. it was literally going from being, like, this decomposed, granite-type stuff to having a more soft feel and having a little bit more of a structure to it. when you would

grab it and squeeze it, it would hold together on its own and everything, and there's earthworms and pill bugs and all kinds of cool, little creatures that are hiding out underneath the soil now, and obviously, there are other living things we can't see under the soil, you know-- beneficial bacteria, fungi, things like that. well, i think i'm only carrying onhe tradition to a degree. we're doing something similar, in a way, something connected but different. traditions that we practice and know today from our ancestors, those were traditions that evolved over 500, 5,000 years. who knows? i just like to think that we can still do something similar. at the same time, it'd be something that is evolved into something that's more feasible that does what it's supposed to with the best possible results.

bacock: we hold some of the truths within our people, within our stories, within our culture, but in a lot of ways, we've lost it. i guess the only beauty to come out of that is that we're starting to regain some of that knowledge again as we're looking at garde on the reservation. the community garden we have going on now is really a way to help us recover the memory lost. being able to use the creek to provide water to food is a direct connection to our people. in fact, where community garden lies now, it sits within areas that our people had always grown food. miller: i think we have 14 or 15 different varieties of vegetables in here right now, and in the wintertime, we cover

them and try to grow cool-weather crops, but in the summertime, we put shade netting on the top, and this is where we grow most of our warm-weather food crops. huette: i think tending the water would be respecting it, knowing where it comes from. you know, so many times i hear, like, "well, you know where your water comes from?" "yeah. just turn the faucet on. it comes from there," and it's like, yeah, there's a whole process to where the water comes from, you know--the wells, the treatment if you treat. know where it comes from. it just doesn't come from the tap. somebody's providing that water to you from somewhere. that would be super beneficial because a lot of people don't understand where it comes from, what it has, what it does to people, life it gives, lives it takes. bacock: water is something when we have a little, we fear not

having enough, and then when we have too much, we fear what it can do. hayden: we might be at a point now, because of our water-rights system, that we need to take a step back and re-evaluate the balance of who's getting how much water for what purposes. we certainly can't have communities going without water and cities vulnerable to not having enough water, not the least of which, i should mention, ecosystems. they're the first to get impacted when it comes to curtailment, so we're going to have to make some really tough decisions about how we manage the water. williams: water is a human right. mother earth gives us everything we need to live. without mother earth, if you deplete everything, you got no life. you don't bless water. water blesses you.

announcer: this program was made possible in part by, a grant from anne ray foundation, a margaret, a. cargill philanthropy. tñ■aañ■ñ■ñ%çwçwçwç■ r

his revolved around changing the structure of the system that's programmed for disaster. i'd like to introduce david through some of his own words excerpted from his forward to my last book dreaming the future. david is an amazing right structural change requires tossing overboard many of the foundational myths of the modern world. the myth of lordly human dominance over nature the presumes that we know enough to manage the planet even though we can't manage the back forty. there's the myth that ignorance is a solvable problem