A Reflection for Kathy Jefferson Bancroft

Aradhna Tripati

UCLA Center for Developing Leadership in Science and American Indian Studies Center

January 2026

Kathy Jefferson Bancroft taught us that a lake is never empty—only unheard.

As part of a group of researchers at UCLA working on water, climate, and Indigenous sovereignty, we

had the profound privilege of collaborating with Kathy through our project, Bringing Together Diverse

Perspectives on Water. From 2019 to when the project was impacted by federal grant cuts last year, this

work brought us into relationship with the Owens Valley communities whose waters Los Angeles has

drawn upon for over a century.

Kathy served on our Technical Advisory Board alongside fellow Tribal Historic Preservation Officers—

Danelle Gutierrez from Big Pine, Sean Scruggs from Fort Independence, and Monty Bengochia from

Bishop—as well as the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission under Teri Red Owl's leadership. But

Kathy's role exceeded any formal title. She was a teacher. She showed us that Patsiata—Owens Lake—is

not a dead lake but a dreaming one. A library of ancestors. This framing echoed how we view our

relationships with land and water.

What Kathy Taught Us

Our project supports the study and braiding of five strands of knowledge: geology and geochemistry,

archaeology, atmospheric science, ethnography, and inclusive education. Kathy work emphasized how

these strands could not be separated from the living communities who hold the land.

In our planning meetings with Owens Valley Tribal Historic Preservation Officers in September 2020,

Kathy introduced herself as someone who tries to deal with the water situation in the valley, how to make

it better and get other people to realize where their water comes from and that it isn't an endless supply.

She named herself, simply, an advocate for water.

She guided us toward research questions that mattered to her people: What are the health effects of

overpumping? What has the draining of Owens Lake meant for ecology, for ceremony, for survival? She

was the one who told us that DWP's main thing right now is trying to pump under Owens Lake... they

have wells everywhere, quite deep. We have to watch them constantly. Her vigilance was both scientific

and sacred.

Kathy taught us about the importance of place-based work—that driving distances in the valley matter,

that Lone Pine shouldn't always have to travel to Bishop, that each community holds its own knowledge

and deserves research centered in its own lands. There were discussions about bringing Tongva and

Owens Valley Tribal leaders together, imagining gatherings where THPOs and cultural monitors could

share what they were learning across the state's long water infrastructure, building curriculum on

Indigenous waters so the next generation would be aware of where their waters came from and what that

meant.

Research in Relationship

We have all been transformed by the ways of knowing that Kathy and her fellow THPOs shared. She

strengthened for all of us the knowledge that water access is not just a policy question but a question of

relationship, of reciprocity, of remembrance.The next generation of researchers – students and postdoctoral scholars supported by the project and part

of CDLS and the AISC—Sedonna Goeman-Shulsky, Allison Ramirez, Thalia Gomez-Quintana, Jory

Lerback, Alexandrea Arnold, Alexa Terrazas, Danielle Kalani Heinz, and Carolyn Rodriguez—were

strongly impacted by the work. When we asked Jory to support Big Pine Paiute presentations at the Great

Basin Water Justice Summit, it was because Kathy and her colleagues had created the space for academic

scientists to show up not as experts, but as witnesses and allies. Jory learned from Sally Manning and

Noah Williams at the Big Pine Paiute Tribal Environmental Department about Fish Springs—a culturally

important wetland dried by the Fish Springs Fish Hatchery on LADWP land. Together, there was an

advocacy plan demanding that the Hatchery "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" its pumped water. We

designed a research project to take sediment cores from a nearby dried wetland on BLM land, analyzing

pollen and plant material to describe the wetland's size and productivity over the past 10,000 years, work

that connected deep time to living sovereignty. The goal was to contextualize scientific findings with

ongoing interviews about what those waters once held—a braiding of proxy data and oral history.

Allison's dissertation examined drought, infrastructure, and Tohono O'odham experience in Arizona using

newspapers, interviews, and legal archives. Thalia traced the necropolitics of water extraction in Yoeme

communities. Sedonna built relationships across the Los Angeles basin and the Owens Valley, compiling

annotated bibliographies of water history and drafting collaborative papers on access mapping with tribal

co-authors. The work that emerged from these relationships—all honor Kathy and her influence on us.

Patsiata and the National Register

In March 2025, after years of work by Kathy and her fellow THPOs, Patsiata joined the National Register

of Historic Places—186 square miles of lakebed recognized not as a relic but as a living archive. Kathy

said of the nomination: This is the first document about the history of the area that comes almost

completely from the Indigenous voice.

This was Kathy's vision: that protection of cultural sites is inseparable from the protection of water, of

dust, of birds, of breath. That repair is kinship.

Carrying the Work Forward

Over six years, our project advanced Indigenous leadership and repair of relationships with water and

land. This included training the next generation of researchers in ethical community-engaged science,

supporting their research and the development of water projects and partnerships with Indigenous

communities, peer-reviewed publications on Indigenous waters in the Southwest, and advocacy. It

strengthened relationships between UCLA and the peoples of Payahuunadü—the land of flowing water.

In August 2025, more than thirty scholars signed a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urging the

city to reopen settlement negotiations with the Bishop, Big Pine, and Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone

Tribes—addressing the 1939 Land Exchange that left these communities on some of the smallest

reservations in the state while trapping their federally reserved water rights beneath lands the city

acquired. Three of our project's PIs were among the signatories. This was policy work rooted in the

relationships Kathy helped us build.

We imagined continuing this work through our planning discussions for the Reparative Climate Action

Collaborative, with the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission as a partner. Our shared vision centered

on Three Creeks—the first "land back" property in Payahuunadü, acquired by OVIWC—where land

stewardship programs, water quality monitoring, and youth education initiatives would carry forward the

vision Kathy articulated: that Indigenous communities must lead in shaping science and decision-making

about their waters. It has shaped our listening to and learning from Maasai communities about water.

From Payahuunadü to Tovaangar

The lessons Kathy taught us about water, relationship, and repair extend beyond the Owens Valley. Los

Angeles—Tovaangar in the Tongva language—is a city built on water taken from elsewhere: from

Payahuunadü, from the Colorado River, from aquifers beneath the LA Basin that once fed springs sacred

to Tongva people. Kathy understood this geography of extraction as a single story. She wanted to bring

Owens Valley and Tongva Tribal leaders together, imagining convenings where THPOs and cultural

monitors could share knowledge across the state's long water infrastructure.

Our project honored that vision. In Los Angeles, we worked with Tongva partners at Kuruvungna

Springs—one of the last free-flowing springs in the basin—installing water filtration systems, conducting

water quality monitoring for salinity, lead, nitrate, and coliform contamination, and supporting the

compilation of a secure database of LA-region springs held by Tongva tribal leaders. UCLA signed a

memorandum of understanding for the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden to provide Indigenous

community access for gathering and traditional language signage, which we learned from and shared.

With the Broad Museum, as part of Social Forest: The Oaks of Tovaangar in the Beuys In Defense of

Nature exhibition, I described how waters and trees—from springs to oaks—like people, carry histories of

place and community encoded in their very being.

If we remember that Patsiata is a library of ancestors, we name what we also hear whispered in pollen,

minerals, and the chemistry of soils across Tovaangar: that landscapes remember. The scars of

deforestation and extraction can be read in the geological record, in the remnants of plants, in the dried

lakebeds and diverted streams. But so too can the resilience of communities who have honored the

lessons of elders while navigating generations of trauma. Engaging in healthy relationships with land and

water—recognizing they are living relatives with generations of knowledge—through stewardship, and

science as ceremony to understand and honor, done in ways that include, center, and empower Indigenous

peoples, is not only key to ecological restoration but also supports cultural health and makes all of us

more resilient to climate change.

When we wrote to Mayor Bass about Owens Valley water rights, we were also speaking to how Los

Angeles might become a different kind of city—one that acknowledges the waters it has taken and

commits to repair, and to be in right relation with other places. When we train the next generation of

scientists to work in relationship with Indigenous communities, when we plant oaks and restore springs,

we are engaging in what might be called environmental reconciliation. Under the shade of trees in this

city, ecological restoration and social justice are intertwined.

For Kathy

Kathy, you showed us that kinship is a verb. That to let water find the dry bed is to return breath to an

elder. That listening is the beginning of all good science.

We will keep moving like water—persistent, shaping stone.

With deep gratitude and respect,

Aradhna Tripati

Faculty Director, Center for Developing Leadership in Science; Professor, UCLA; Advisory Committee,

UCLA American Indian Studies Center