Water for Life

Copresented with The Promise Institute of Human Rights (L.A.) and the UCLA American Indian Studies Center

Water For Life tells the story of three extraordinary individuals: Berta Cáceres, a Lenca Indigenous leader in Honduras; Francisco Piñeda, a subsistence farmer in El Salvador; and Alberto Curamil, an Indigenous Mapuche Chief in Chile, all of whom refused to let government-supported industry and transnational corporations take their water and redirect it to mining, hydroelectric, or large scale industrial agriculture projects.

A post screening conversation moderated by Jessica Cattelino, Director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center, with Teri Red Owl, citizen of the Bishop Paiute Tribe and Executive Director of the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission (OVIWC) and AnMarie Mendoza, a Tongva water protector and Paya/Paar outreach director for OVIWC, will connect the struggles in Latin America depicted in Water for Life to local struggles led by Native Americans to protect and reclaim water resources of Payahuunadü (the Owens Valley) diverted to Los Angeles.

An enrolled citizen of the Bishop Paiute Tribe, Teri Red Owl has dedicated herself to the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission since 1994. The Commission is a Tribal Consortium that provides water, environmental, land stewardship, and food sovereignty services to its member Tribes. She is at the forefront of efforts to expand tribal land bases and secure sufficient water to meet the current and future needs of the Bishop, Big Pine, and Lone Pine tribes. Red Owl advocates for justice, environmental protection, and policy change in Payahuunadü, in Los Angeles, and at the state and federal levels. She has also served on the Inyo County Water Commission since 1998, the Bishop Paiute Development Corporation since 2007, and several other boards and committees including the Inyo/Los Angeles Standing Committee. Red Owl has two business degrees and is a licensed Tribal Court Advocate. In her spare time, she volunteers as a youth cheerleader head coach.

A Tongva water protector, born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, AnMarie Mendoza is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at UCLA who focuses on the barriers and opportunities that local Native people face in participating in proposed water planning in Los Angeles. She is the co-creator and director of Aqueduct Between Us, a five-part social justice multimedia radical oral history documentary that aims to educate the people of Los Angeles about water through an Indigenous historical and political perspective. She is also the Paya/Paar (water) outreach director for the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission.

Moderator for the event, Jessica Cattelino studies everyday political and material processes in the United States. She is author of High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. Cattelino’s book-in-progress examines how people are tied to one another through water in the Florida Everglades. She conducts oral history research about water in Payahuunadü, in partnership with the Big Pine Paiute Tribe, and on gender and everyday household water use in Los Angeles. She is a UCLA professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies, with a courtesy faculty appointment in Gender Studies, and she is Director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center.