When you're out there in the tule fields, you're having fun, you're making stuff out of it, like my grandma and her mom did, making dolls, cordage, bracelets, anklets… everything out of tule, just for fun. The actual word for fun is Tlakala, which encapsulates tule in it. Tlaka means tule, Tlakala means fun.
The YoloSol Collective and Davis Arts Center invite you to witness stories of cultural resurgence and ecological regeneration in the exhibit Good Fire, Living Water: The Gifts of a Marsh Economy, which features the eco-cultural arts of Wintun/Maidu culture-bearer Diana Almendariz (recently awarded the 60 Changemakers of 2026 Award by the Sacramento Bee), her daughters Christina Almendariz and Ooti Maxine.
Deeply influenced by the work of Maidu artist Frank Day, Diana’s landscape paintings are not mere representations of her ancestral lands and waters, but are ‘encyclopedia’ paintings that contain important cultural and ecological lessons. Her daughter Ooti Maxine, who was recently commissioned to create a mural at the Yolo Basin Foundation, brings her own unique urban perspective around eco-cultural issues to her illustrations.
This exhibit features a selection of their artwork, accompanied by a series of archival and contemporary photographs from Diana’s personal collection, and a tule boat installation that was created with participants from the Sacramento Native American Health Center. Diana offers ongoing TEK workshops across the Yolo Bioregion and the state of California with intergenerational Native communities, and their friends.
The tule boat is necessary in order to travel up and down the rivers, which are now highways for cars. California’s many creeks, rivers, and lakes were inter-connected, which meant you could literally travel to almost anywhere you needed to go. People lived near waterways, so you can imagine the tule boats were well-used.
Once abundant in the Central Valley, tule and cattail marshes are now severely reduced, impacting both the environment and the cultures that thrive on it. More than 95% of California’s wetlands have been destroyed over the last 200 years. Given their versatility and importance in sustaining natural-cultural relations, keeping tule traditions alive is of vital importance to all lands and waterways they are nested in. While rooted in Wintun/Maidu stewardship principles, which require discipline and commitment, learning to care for tule has beneficial implications for all those who live alongside it in this Yolo Bioregion, and across the world.
Tule, along with cattail, is at the heart of the marsh economy. These plant relatives ensure the richness and health of our soils, reintroducing minerals and microbes that are necessary for regeneration of cycles of life. The Native cultural lifestyle sequesters carbon - the essential building blocks of life. In the absence of tule and cattail, soils across California have become impoverished.
This reflects a deeper impoverishment of our values, according to Diana. The wetlands and its denizens exist on the margins of modern life, whereas they were at the center of life for Homeland communities. We engage the wetlands as swamps, and with suspicion now. We experience the smells, sounds, and sensory gifts of the marsh economy in fragments on weekend visits, or from a distance driving across the causeway. This impoverishment of our senses is only made worse by our digital lives and media cultures, which erode our connection to the earth and disable us from hearing and seeing what the land has to say and show.
The water has this 24-7 workforce of tiny organisms, living their lives, that help break down nutrients so that plants can use them. The ash and biochar from the burn creates a buffet for the bacteria, which feed the insects, which feed the fish, which feed the otter and so on all the way up to the food chain. The foundation of all life is found in wetlands.
The wetlands are Diana’s classroom, and here she gathers her circle of practice: her family, her friends and allies, and a wide circle of fellow-practitioners and students. At the heart of this circle are invertebrates and microbes – the smallest forms of life in the wetlands – but the most important for the health of the entire ecosystem. Her lessons teach us that we must work for the microbes and invertebrates, as much as they work for us. For in the end, we belong to the land, the land does not belong to us.
I am now in the process of working with ecologists and scientists to renew our understanding of how we can restore the wetlands. It is clear that cultural knowledge about tule is a critical part of the tools required in this endeavor. This is not only about recovering lost traditions, but about evolving new ones to meet the needs of the present.
Diana puts into practice Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insight that science can help us understand environmental destruction, but it is not enough to heal it. By reintroducing concepts of kinship, gratitude, and reciprocity, her homeland wisdom turns environmental stewardship into a relationship to be nurtured, rather than an obligation to be fulfilled.
The exhibit at the Davis Arts Center is an opportunity to learn about the gifts of the Marsh economy, and to reflect on what gifts we can give back. It is an invitation to develop a personal relationship to the wetlands and creeks that weave together the Yolo Bioregion, and to become part of YoloSol’s circle of practice.
The multimedia exhibit also highlights Diana’s collaboration with artists and scientists in the Yolo Bioregion, and will include audio recordings, an interactive Slice of the Wetlands display about wetland ecology, hand-crafted arts using natural dyes and papers made from wetland plants, guides to the Yolo Bioregion’s creeks and wetlands, zines, and participatory art-making opportunities!
The exhibit runs September 20-November 13, and is free of cost. Gallery hours are 9am-7pm (weekdays) and 9am-3pm on weekends. Save the date for 2nd Friday ArtAbout (October 9 and November 13), and a Tule Traditions Storytelling and Workshop (on November 7). You can learn more about the exhibit at: https://yolosol.org/goodfirelivingwaterexhibit/
This exhibit is partially funded by the City of Davis Arts and Cultural Fund, the Davis Arts Center, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, and the Attardo Lab (UC Davis).
