Living Waters: Sharing acequia culture with a new generation

For rural northern New Mexico’s acequia communities, engaging youth isn’t only about education. It’s about the survival of a living, culturally vital way of life.

The New Mexico Acequia Association’s Youth Leadership Institute is passing that tradition to the next generation. Paid participants ages 14 to 19 learn irrigation and farming practices, climate resilience, and acequia governance, alongside music, language and traditional ecological knowledge. The result is more than a summer program: It’s a chance to build deep roots in their communities and to imagine a future there.