>> Laura Paskus: IN NEW MEXICO, WE PUT OUR RIVERS TO WORK.

WE TREAT THEM AS CONVEYANCE CHANNELS FOR WATER WE WANT TO USE, AND WE USE THEM TO DILUTE THE WASTE WE DON'T WANT.

OVER THE LAST FEW HUNDRED YEARS IN THE UNITED STATES, THIS MINDSET HAS DOMINATED OUR SOCIETY.

WE THINK ALWAYS OF HOW RIVERS SERVE US...

RARELY DO WE REMEMBER THAT RIVERS ARE THEIR OWN CREATURES.

AND AS LIVING BEINGS THEMSELVES, THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO TEACH US.

WITH FUNDING FROM THE WATER DESK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER, THE OUR LAND CREW VISTED THE GILA RIVER, INCLUDING A STRETCH THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN CHANGED FOREVER IF NEW MEXICO HAD MOVED FORWARD ON A CONTROVERSIAL DIVE RSION...

IN THIS SPECIAL OUR LAND SEGMENT, WE CONSIDER WHAT LESSONS THE UPPER GILA RIVER HOLDS FOR THE REST OF THE WATERSHED.

>> Laura Paskus: Southwestern New Mexico has witnessed many battles.

Including over the waters of the Gila River...And who gets to use them.

Down in this valley, downstream of the nation's first designated wilderness area, the most recent battle was over whether to build a diversion on a free-flowing stretch of the river high in the watershed.

But people also love the Gila, even if it's for different reasons.

>> Martha Cooper: I love swimming in it, I love sitting by it running by it.

Other people love it because of the crops they grow from the water from the river and saw they saw an opportunity to divert more water and have more water available throughout the year.

They wanted that reliability.

So it helped me to remember that we all love the same place just from different perspectives.

>> Laura Paskus: This river is home to so much life.

It nurtures farmlands.

And cities.

Wildlife.

Ecosystems.

If we pay attention, it also has a lot to teach us.

>> Martha Cooper: I like to call it a reference river, a place that we can come and kind of learn how rivers used to work before they were damned and over diverted and dewatered.

We can't really restore rivers without there being some water in them.

I think the importance of some perennial flow is really something the Gila shows us.

>> Martha Cooper: As we try to live with climate change and this increased range of flows, we're going to have even bigger floods and we're going to have even lower flows and longer.

It's during those low flow periods that people start thinking we can like move our way back into the flood plain and that's happened in this valley and then the floods come and people are like oops yes back to the edges.

>> Laura Paskus: The Gila is a tributary of the Colorado river where further downstream, major cities and big irrigation districts vie for water from the Colorado's declining flows and dropping reservoirs.

Here, high in the watershed, the Gila offers something else.

Wildness.

Unpredictability.

A glimpse at the past, and a map for the future.

Before white settlers started farming along the Gila, this was Apache land.

>> Joe Saenz: We refer to it as nde behan [Introduction in Apache] >> Laura Paskus: Growing up, Joe Saenz's mother taught him about water >> Joe Saenz: She would talk about water as a spirit, like my grandfather used to talk about trees like they were people.

Even though we live in the kind of country that we live in as the dialogue goes you know we had hydrologists.

We had people that understood water, where it was, how to get it ,what was good, what was not.

Water has always been one of those elements that should be in balance with everything else.

>> Laura Paskus: Now more than ever we need to find balance.

Here there is still a place to learn.

>> Joe Saenz: What does Gila mean?

To us it's a Spanish word, you know so it doesn't do much to inspire us and so we we rather suggested that uh if you really want to protect this country include us, because we can tell you how to protect it.

We can tell you the intricacies of the animals, the grass, the waters, the trees, the plants, everything how they fit together and what you need to consider and how to protect it.

But if you're going to break it up and just protect pieces that's that's not going to work either because it doesn't work that way.

>> Laura Paskus: Breaking a river apart from its land...Dividing a river into stretches....Splitting the parts of a whole into whatever humans want at the moment...That doesn't work.

Or at least, it doesn't work for long.

>> Joe Saenz: I asked my elders, I asked them, can you tell me about what this place was called you know because some of those names we've lost from how we were scattered from this country, we've lost those.

They themselves asked around to other elders and the closest thing that we could come to that they shared with me was that at one point they may have referred to the Gila and the and this region as [[hooth lee]], a term that describes the beginning where everything emanates from, the start uh and so it ties in with our creation stories, the river itself >> Laura Paskus: Saenz says that for the Apache, culture revolves around change...

But so many of the changes he sees today ... around his home...And when he leads outfitting trips into the Gila.

.. Those are different.

>> Joe Saenz: I've noticed it in real time here I mean, for me to have grown up in a time when you could literally set your clock to some things.

You can't really do that anymore.

What I started to notice was the vultures and the eagles.

It used to always be like clockwork April 1st and November 1st they switched.

The last couple of years, um they're a week off.

You know, no big deal nobody notices that, I guess, you know maybe some people do.

I started to see in the weather change you know 15 years ago where I it was like this this can't be drought this there's something else here.

For the last 200 years America has been progressing to a point that literally it's killing itself, and when people ask well what what's happening, what you know what are we going to do about it?

It's kind of tough, because my response is always we tried 500 years ago to tell you don't do this.

We told you 300 years ago, we told you 200 years ago, and when we told you 200 years ago, you put us in jail, and so you're not listening to the change.

>> Laura Paskus: To survive this warming world, with its droughts and fires and floods, we need to change.

And we can start by listening to the Gila.

>> Joe Saenz: I think to me, to us, the river's basically telling us: join me don't try to stop me, don't try to change me, join me, and live with how I change.

There are reasons for those floods, there are reasons for times when rivers run slow, there's reasons for all of that and so those changes need to happen.

still trying to find out how to spell this in english