No one description of an indigenous people’s relation with water can stand for all native peoples, but different indigenous attitudes and relations towards water have largely been subsumed under such categories as “religion” or “myth.” These categories have typically been interpreted from a Western perspective.

Water in the Western religions has varied symbolic significance. The waters of creation in Genesis have been understood in their historical and mythological connections with Mesopotamian ideas about Tiamat and the need to order the waters of chaos. In the episode at the Samaritan well Jesus promises living waters in place of the limited nourishment of the water from Jacob’s well. The Abrahamic traditions also speak of the purificatory power of water to sacralize material reality. Are these religious ideas embedded in terms such as “resource” and “natural resource?” Water as chaos in need of order, or as a spiritualizing force, or as symbol of purification are typical readings projected onto indigenous perspectives on water. Have they been an adequate interpretation? Do native peoples have different perspectives regarding water?

The Salish elder, Martin Louie, of the Columbia River Plateau region observes that water is an encounter with mystery saying, “Where water comes from nobody knows, where it goes to is still a mystery.” Again, he commented, “That place where water comes from never empties, and where water flows to is never filled.” In addition, what does it mean when the Hopi of the Southwest say that water comes from the a ni himu, “the real?” Is it sufficient to understand this people’s agriculture, ritual life, and social kinship in its relationship to water as simply the unfolding of the symbolic imagination? Is this simply an interaction with a resource? This presentation considers indigenous perspectives that suggest different relations with water than the terms “resource” or “natural resource.”