“Unsafe water kills more people than war,” says Ta’Kaiya, whose name means “Special Waters,” in the video. “Life is not possible without water. Water gives life to all of us.”

Water is the elixir of life; without it, we die within days. It is second only to air as the reason any of us are here at all. Yet “768 million people lack access to improved water sources, and 2.5 billion have no improved sanitation,” according to the United Nations.

Around the world the supply is threatened by pesticides, fracking chemicals, consumer-product runoff and a host of other contaminants and factors. Drought is drying up California and much of the Navajo Nation; glaciers and Arctic ice are melting, sending water where it shouldn’t go and changing the climatic balance; and oceans are filling with plastic.

“Throughout history, people of all races, religions and ways of life have honored their sacred connection to water,” Ta’Kaiya says. “And today this relationship is being forgotten.”


“We are protected by water in our mother’s womb,” Ta’Kaiya says in her video. “Now it is our turn to protect and love the water of our Mother Earth.”