Acknowledgments
The cultural relationship to and importance of water is evident throughout California’s diverse Tribal communities and is sacred in Tribal societies. Ancient Tribal societies were organized into moieties or clans, which revered water and references back to traditional law. This typically placed the responsibilities to look after water on the members of that moiety or clan. Nearly every Tribe has traditional stories about water that addresses the origins of human beings to explaining the place where one’s ancestors depart to when deceased. As part of the California Water Plan Update 2009 process, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) convened a voluntary Tribal Communication Committee in December 2007 to seek advice on how to communicate appropriately and e ectively with California Native American Tribes. The Committee released a working draft Tribal Communication Plan in July 2008. In this process, the Committee identified stories as a powerful and e ective educational tool because they involved real people, places, and histories. The Committee initiated a Tribal Water Stories project and began reaching out to all California Native American Tribes to submit stories that explained something about a Tribe’s historical connections with water and its current connections with water, to convey that Tribes continue to be a part of California’s diverse landscapes. The full list of Tribal Water Stories can be found at water.ca.gov/About/Tribal-Policy. The Fish Story water original two separate stories provided to the Committee and was included in the Tribal Water Stories. One story was from the Paiute of the Mono Lake area as shared by Raymond Andrews in 2014. The Fish Story 2 was also from the Paiute of the Mono Lake area and the storyteller was Tina Charlie, transcribed by Helen August, edited by Ron Goode in 2014, and shared by Raymond Andrews in 2014. The two Fish Stories were combined and adopted by Kelley List, DWR, in collaboration with Anecita Agustinez, DWR’s Tribal Policy Advisor.
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Volume 2
!"#$%&$'( !
My age is
My school is
My favorite body of water is
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The fish was trout. Trout started in Convict Lake, but the water was too shallow for Trout. Trout was forced to move to find water deep enough for Trout to live.
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Trout heard about a lake in the north and was told June Lake was where trout this large should go. Trout headed upriver to June Lake looking for the deep water.
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Trout found June Lake, but the lake was not deep enough for Trout. Half of Trout’s body stuck up out of the water! Trout swam around and decided it was nice enough to hatch some fish. Trout was told that June Lake was not the place for him and should keep heading upriver to Silver Lake. Trout left the hatchlings since June Lake was deep enough for them.
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Trout kept swimming upriver and found Silver Lake and swam about it, trying to find a deep place. But Trout could not find a place deep enough to cover its whole body. Trout was getting tired from the long journey upriver, but Trout kept going.
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Trout kept swimming up Rush Creek to Grant Lake. Trout was told that a dam had been built on Grant Lake out of large boulders. When Trout got there, Wolf (E Sha) was fishing at Lee Vining Creek and hunting at Red Mountain. Wolf built a dam to keep the large fish he caught.
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Coyote (Etza a) was also at Grant Lake (Hava ka’tun means “sitting in the shade”). Coyote came and broke open the dam that Wolf built. As soon as Coyote opened the dam. Wolf knew about it and ran down to the creek below the dam. Trout was swimming around looking for the deep water. But when Coyote opened the dam, the deep water escaped, and Trout no longer had a deep enough water to cover its body.
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Wolf brought a big flat rock to stop the water, but Trout was so big that it went right through the flat rock and traveled the creek until Trout got to the place called du-be-chagee-e.
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The Indians built a rock dam there and tried to head Trout o from going any further. Trout did not like this place and broke through the rock dam.
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Trout swam onto Mono Lake (Cuzavi ba), which was a freshwater lake at the time. Trout stayed in Mono Lake for awhile and swam about. Trout was tired from all the upriver swimming and needed to rest. But Mono Lake was also too shallow for Trout. Trout tried rolling around on the bottom of Mono Lake, but Trout kept scraping o its scales. These scales became cutza’vi, which Indians still eat today!
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The Indians seeing Trout scraping o its scales began collecting white volcanic rock from the White Mountain and placed the rock at the edge of the lake. Black rock was also gathered from the side of the lake from a placed called To-pu-kee-e. With these black and white rocks, the Indians tried to hit Trout to prevent it from swimming on any farther.
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The Indians piled the rocks alternating black and white on top of Trout. Trout wiggled with all it had and broke loose. Trout swam under the pile of white and black rocks, but Trout’s skin came o as it crawled away.
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As Trout escaped, Trout said, “In this lake there will be cu-cha-ve. In this lake, when the Indians gather food every year, the water will taste bitter and will not be good to drink.” The Indians say these White Mountain rocks and black rocks created two islands in the middle of Mono Lake called pa—na-moo-gui-ca-tu dd and pie-ca-d-d.
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Trout was determined to find a lake deep enough to cover its body and where the Indians and Wolf would not try to trap it. Trout kept swimming and found Walker Lake (a gee ba a or pugwe ba a) but again it was not deep enough. Trout said, “This water is still not deep enough for me to stay, so I will plant some trout here and leave this lake.”
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The hatchlings were very large with some weighing over 15 pounds! Trout did not see the hatchlings grow this large for it was still traveling and searching for deep water.
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Trout traveled to four other shallow lakes and followed the Truckee River until it ended in Lake Tahoe.
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Lake Tahoe
Trout swam about in Lake Tahoe and said, “In this place, I will stay if it is deep enough for me.” Trout liked Lake Tahoe and said, “This is the place where I ought to be.”
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Trout whistled as it entered the waters of the lake. Lake Tahoe is the place the people catch many trout of all di erent sizes. Trout is there today.
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DWR contracted with Dudek to develop K-12 educational materials for school districts and educators statewide to conduct communication and engagement and help identify the needs, risks, and vulnerabilities of Tribes and other underrepresented communities (URCs) with respect to the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Through the process, and in collaboration with the DWR Tribal Liaison, the URC Technical Assistance Program (URC TA Program) and Executive sta determined that making the Tribal Water Stories into graphic novels would be highly beneficial to continued outreach to Tribes and to teach California youth the importance of water and its connection to California Native America Tribes.
DWR intends to continue developing more graphical novels using the Tribal Water Stories in its ongoing e ort in outreaching and educating youth on the importance of water, where their water comes from, what groundwater is, how groundwater is connected to surface water, and many other water supply and quality related topics. Video links for the animation of these graphical novels will be added to the URC TA Program when available. For updates on the K-12
educational materials, URC TA Program, and more Tribal Water Story graphical novels, please visit www.water.ca.gov/urctaprogram or email the URC TA Program at SGM_TA@water.ca.gov.
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