Sacred Water Mountain Society

The Sacred Water Mountain Society was formed after Standing Rock by three Indigenous families; one Diné, one Santo Domingo Pueblo, and Dustin Freyta’s family who are descendants of Taosenos and Indigenous slaves known as Genízaro. A large part of the society’s work is planting water. In the mountains of the upper Rio Grand watershed, there are many examples of active water catchment sites from the work of ancient Indigenous people. When colonization disrupted this relationship and Indigenous people were detribalized, they stopped managing the land in these ways. SWMS has been focusing on learning from the catchment systems that still exist, protecting them, and implementing and replicating ancient methods of planting water, especially where rivers and streams have been desertified by overgrazing. SWMS reminds local water protectors that the water retention methods we are seeing emerge in other parts of the world don’t have to be replicated in Taos, they have to be remembered.