Adrián Sandoval: Water Is Life

“El agua es la vida,” states Adrián Sandoval, a native of northern New Mexico, where water is indeed life, but also much, much more. For hundreds if not thousands of years, Native peoples of the area have used complex systems of irrigation to produce a variety of foods in this high, dry desert. The Spanish arrived in the 16th century with their own designs on how to make the most of limited water supplies in the Southwest. Both the Native and the Spanish populations used their respective languages as the basis of communication in order to build these systems, often borrowing engineering strategies and elements of language from each other. Like many northern New Mexicans of the 21st century, Spanish and Native alike, Adrián has witnessed a growing estrangement among youth from the knowledge of water use in the Southwest, and the cultural and linguistic elements associated with that knowledge. Some of this estrangement may be due to the fact that local, traditional knowledge of water use is not generally included in curricula approved for use in the public and private schools of the state. Working through the Center for the Education and Study of Diverse Populations (CESDP) at New Mexico Highlands University, and the Acequia and Land Grant Education (ALGE) curriculum, Adrián, along with a network of concerned and dedicated educators, has worked assiduously to preserve the ancient knowledge of water use in the Southwest, as well as the languages associated with it, in the form of a curriculum that can be implemented and practiced in classrooms around the state. Listen as we draw from the great well of cultural and linguistic knowledge of Adrián Sandoval. We also discuss the fractional and the holistic views of multilingualism.