Scene and Heard Film Series Presents

Paya: The Water Story of the Paiute tells the untold story of America’s longest lived water war between the Owens Valley Paiute and the city of Los Angeles. Paya documents the history of the Owens Valley Paiute who constructed and managed sixty square miles of intricate irrigation systems for millennia, long before Los Angeles diverted the Owens River through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 220 miles across the Mojave Desert. After the Indian War of 1863, surviving Paiute returned to the valley from the Eastern Sierra and White Mountains to find their ancient waterworks taken over by white settlers. Over 150-years later, the Paiute continue the fight to save their waterworks, which are remnant in the Owens Valley landscape.