Water Is Life

The Native American Struggle for Environmental Justice

By: John Guthrie

Narrated by: Justice Margowski

Water's significance gave rise to ceremonies, traditions, and stories across Native American tribes across the plains, rivers, mountains, and deserts—from Pueblo tribes in the Southwest who honor it through Kiva ceremonies resembling rainfall from clouds to Haida people from the Pacific Northwest telling tales about how Raven brought freshwater springs back from faraway places—while all share an appreciation of water as sacred.

However, with colonization came the disruption of this sacred equilibrium. Colonists brought a different view of nature, one that saw its resources as commodities to be bought and sold. Over the course of centuries, this conflict of ideologies would continue, one that persists today in courtroom debates surrounding Indigenous rights, on front lines protesting pipeline projects, and in the hearts and minds of people advocating that "water is life". So when a water protector proclaims "water is life", they speak not just in slogan form, but as part of an ancient philosophy that dates back millennia. Their call to recognize water as a fundamental right, rather than a commodity, is clear: to return to ways of living that honor rather than exploit the Earth itself.

©2023 Connie A Guthrie (P)2023 Connie A Guthrie