[photo credit: Yelp]
The 70-minute film highlights Tribal nations with homelands in California’s forest, urban, desert and coastal lands and the ways they protect sacred water, according to the Sacred Places Institute. Its producers describe it as centering Indigenous voices, knowledge and resilience amid ongoing environmental injustice and the legacy of settler colonialism.
The screening lands in Old Pasadena, in a city where the Hahamog’na band of Tongva people lived along the Arroyo Seco long before it took its name. Isaiah Mendoza, a member of the institute’s Indigenous Media Team, grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and studied film and photography at Pasadena City College.
The institute dates the film to 2024 and credits support from Patagonia, the Weingart Foundation and the Climate Science Alliance. Angela Mooney D’Arcy, of the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, founded the Los Angeles County-based institute in 2012 and serves as its executive director.
The film has screened before in the region, at the Getty in 2025 and at Antelope Valley Indian Museum State Historic Park in Lancaster last December.
Need to know: “Our Water Ways: California Tribal Stories” screens Tuesday, Aug. 25, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Patagonia Pasadena, 47 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, CA 91103. Admission is free and an RSVP is required. The One Colorado parking structure is at the southeast corner of Fair Oaks and Union Street. For more, call (626) 795-0319 or visit Patagonia Pasadena.
