WATER IS LIFE eech noohwahgut. Tvtlhxvt xweenish. nîpîy oma pimâtisiwin.

Nibi gaa-bimaaji’iwemagak.

Water Is Life and yet when it comes to the people that belong to these lands and waters it has become a weapon against us. According to the Water & Tribes Initiative, “forty-eight percent of Tribal homes in the United States do not have access to reliable water sources, clean drinking water, or basic sanitation,” while studies show that seventy-three percent of First Nations water systems are at high or medium risk for contamination, with some Reserves water advisories dating back twenty plus years.

While the toll on Indigenous peoples is heavy we also must look to our plant and animal relatives' loss as well and recognize our historical relationship with water so we can honor what was stolen from us and reimagine our future. In the following pages we will explore some of those histories and what both Tribes and individuals are doing to reconnect some of those severed ties and how our ancestors are speaking out from the past to bring those connections home.

Now can you imagine fields of cotton, amaranth, squash, beans, tobacco, barley, agave, cholla, and an estimated one hundred thousand acres of maize growing in the Sonoran desert? What about riparian zones and aquaculture of fish and mollusks? Not now, with piped water and mechanized irrigation, but nearly two thousand years ago with O’odham community built water infrastructure in the form of around five hundred miles of gravity fed canals, the largest water system in the so-called americas at the time. Is it hard to picture? Well you don’t have to look any further than Phoenix, Arizona if so, it was created from the remnants of these systems, with a dozen of the canals, 65 miles worth, built on or parallel to these original ones. You also don’t have to look hard for the foods or people that descended from this because farms like the San Xavier Co-op are carrying the torch of their ancestors. What about the Mexica and their lake city of Tenochtitlan, what is modern day Mexico City, with a canal system that separated fresh and salt water to create ecosystems for their “floating gardens” called chinampas. Chinampas are wo/man made islands, some three hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, traditionally composed of a bundled willow retaining wall and layered with soil, organic matter, and sludge from the canal system that were then planted just like a field. Today six thousand acres of wetlands on Lake Xochimilco are still home to this agra/aquacultural knowledge and as a result of the Covid pandemic it is even seeing a resurgence. We can be sure that this growing technique will be teaching us all into the future as we find ourselves moving into an ever growing realm of climate catastrophes.

Are you familiar with aquaculture? One of the many practices Indigenous peoples enlisted to create sustainable foodways is by building, and maintaining, water farming techniques. By definition aquaculture is breeding, rearing, and harvesting flora and fauna in freshwater but, through an Indigenous lens, it becomes a space of creating balance and habitat for our plant and animal relations. Cranberries is a good example and one of our featured recipes. Having previously harvested wild cranberry for market sales the Wahta Mohawks in

Ontario began the Iroquois Cranberry Growers (ICG) in the 1960s with just half an acre of cranberry bog and eventually growing it to sixty eight acres before closing their doors in 2016 due to market issues although we guarantee that with the growth in want for Indigenous raised produce they would definitely fill a niche market with Native Chefs! What do you do with cranberries? Here’s one of our favorite treats to last throughout the winter!

Ingredients:

1 12oz Bag Cranberries

1 Medium Orange (zested squeezed)

1 Small Piece Ginger (sliced)

1 Pint Honey

1 Small Canela/Cinnamon Stick (optional)

- You will also need a quart mason jar, a glass fermentation weight, and a fermentation

Cranberries