Remembering kathy jefferson bancroft: indigenous leader who fought for california’s stolen owens lake

Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, a tireless advocate for Indigenous water rights and environmental justice, passed away on January 25, 2026, at age 71. Her death marks the end of a decades-long fight to protect Owens Valley in California’s interior, where a massive aqueduct diverts snowmelt south to Los Angeles, leaving behind a desiccated lakebed where a thriving ecosystem once flourished.

Born and raised in Owens Valley, Bancroft grew up hearing her grandmother’s stories about Owens Lake when it was full of water and migrating birds so numerous they would “darken the sky.” For the Paiute and Shoshone people of Payahüünadu, this wasn’t just environmental destruction—it was the erasure of thousands of years of cultural memory and ancestral connection to the land. What government agencies and water companies treated as separate technical issues—dust control, hydrology, cultural sites—Bancroft understood as interconnected parts of a living landscape with deep spiritual and historical significance.

Throughout her career, Bancroft challenged the standard approach of relegating tribal consultation to the end of decision-making processes. Instead, she fought to ensure that Indigenous perspectives and knowledge were central to any discussions about the valley’s future. Her work exemplified a fundamentally different worldview: seeing land and water not as commodities to be managed, but as relationships requiring respect and responsibility.

Bancroft’s legacy lives on in her unwavering insistence that Owens Valley be treated as a place with sacred obligations, not merely an asset with environmental constraints to be minimized on corporate balance sheets.