Pilot Learnings Final Report

A pilot that proved the ecosystem is real

Over the past year, five community-led groups piloted a simple idea: that river stewardship, cultural knowledge, food sovereignty, art, and design grow stronger when they move as one ecosystem. The results bear it out. Volunteers stewarded roughly three acres of the Rio Salado from the Transformation Site to the 3rd Street bridge. A river systems tour carried residents across six waterway sites and changed how they see water in this valley. Grassroots O'otham translations moved toward city infrastructure through patient relationship building. Seed savers scaled from backyard gardens toward a networked food system. And throughout, the groups shared venues, vendors, meals, equipment, and leadership.

Just as important is what the pilot taught. The learnings below, about belonging, place-based education, consent-paced work, rotating leadership, and shared resources, are the foundation of the cohort's shared narrative for 2026.

Impact in numbers

What each group did, and what it learned

Protectors of the Salt River

Stewardship

What we did

• Held a consistent geographic focus: ~3 acres from the Transformation Site to the 3rd Street bridge, with 615+ volunteer shifts and 740+ bags removed.
• Reduced stinknet to near zero in the primary target area through manual removal.
• Began rotating clean-up leads, creating stipend opportunities for volunteers to step into leadership.
• Introduced volunteers to plant-based and traditional foods and new vendors, expanding the foodways network.

What we learned

• Belonging drives stewardship. Welcoming families and children, the LGBTQ+ community, and all cultures created a space people return to. Clean-up is a selfless act that builds community.
• Intergenerational space grew by design. Young people have come and grown over the years of the work.
• Invasive removal is multi-year work: stunt growth early, remove the seeds, and steward each area until native plants can outcompete.

Growing next: a run / walk / bike the Rio series, opening the river for joy and physical activity beyond work days.

AZ (LAND)

Land & learning

What we did

• Designed a river systems tour across six waterway sites so residents could experience the whole system at once.
• Activated 7th Avenue, Central, and 7th Street along the Rio Salado through art programming and ecowalks pairing history with artmaking.
• Worked with 35 different artists to process life expectancy gaps, heat island impacts, and safety through art.

What we learned

• The disconnect starts early. Classrooms separate children from land and curriculum from place, and the same gap persists in adults. Most of us don't know our waterways.
• Bring the person into place. Awareness of waterways and stewardship grows when people stand in the system, journal, reflect, and make art there.
• Perception shifts are measurable in conversation: participants began questioning what a "waterway" even is when water is managed apart from its ecology.

Stop 1

Rio Salado Audubon Center

Most participants didn't know the Audubon or the Rio Salado itself was there. An oasis hiding in plain sight became the introduction to stewardship.

Stop 2

Tempe Town Lake

A place that is "economically great," where no one is allowed in the water and the environment is kept separate from it. With lead artist Luke Ramsey, who turns invasive plants into paper, the community journaled on what separation does to water quality: ecological systems are filtration, and here the group saw filtration versus machinery.

Stop 3

Pierce Wetlands

Accidental biodiversity thriving across city lines, tended by no city at all. It is a living example of an ecosystem left alone, right beside the freeway.

Stop 4

Mar 5: Managed Aquifer Recharge

Managed by the reservation, alive with turkey vultures, and open to residents who harvest for basket making. A demonstration of how a space can invite people in.

Stop 5

Gila Bend Petroglyph Site

A dry site rich with history and context, now under threat of destruction. Student presenters (with Jorge Morales) explored calendar narratives and design, and pulled from the archive to disrupt the story Phoenix tried to tell: "no one was here when we arrived." The archive shows people were here, and they were hospitable.

Stop 6

Tres Rios

A managed waterway with no one there, where only certain people have access. The closing question of the tour: who is water for?

Cultural Signage

Language & place

What we did

• Advanced O'otham translations into city infrastructure projects, including translations requested by the City of Phoenix for the upcoming bridge announcement.
• Partnered with Audubon on signage locations and funding, working toward signage at the Rio Salado.
• Held informational discussions with cultural committee chairpeople for council and the tribal education department.
• Prepared grassroots translations for presentation to the intertribal council so parks can install signage.
• Assembled a working body of O'otham names for the plants and waterways of this stretch of river, spanning desert and riparian plants, cultivated crops grown along the water, and the waterways themselves. The names are held for Community review before any of them appear in public.

What we learned

• Lead with internal relationships. Progress comes through Gila River Indian Community members, the Community's approved orthography, and its own processes. The knowledge carried in these names belongs to Community members, and they decide when and how it travels.
• Formal consent is the deliverable. Permission to use the translations is pending, and researching the proper process for Community Council approval is itself part of the work.

Design Empowerment PHX

Design & fabrication

What we did

• Developed initial sketches for signage and site design work.
• Fabricated a sample sign: a steel plate with Arizona's watersheds cut through it, naming the Colorado, Little Colorado, Verde, Agua Fria, Salt, Gila, San Pedro, and Santa Cruz rivers as one connected system.
• Provided The Sagrado as a sanctuary for community visioning sessions and appreciation meals, and hosted adobe brick-making workshops teaching sustainable, traditional building.

What we learned

• Consensus precedes fabrication. Pilot metrics are intentionally still open: fabrication waits until the Cultural Signage process reaches consensus. In consent-based design, sequencing correctly is the milestone. The sample sign demonstrates method, not content: it carries only the rivers' English names, and no cultural signage will be cut until the process reaches consensus.

Foodways

Food sovereignty

What we did

• Grew 16 seed varieties across the 2025/2026 seasons, with 12 established in gardeners' seed banks and home and community garden beds in active production.
• Established 15 networking groups, with a presentation at the Prickly Pear Festival.
• Received a gifted tractor, mill, drip irrigation equipment, and a shredder for composting. These resources are now shared across the coalition.
• Gila River Indian Community member Rebecca Moffett was featured by the Indian Health Service in its Rooted in Culture: Native Foods of America campaign; she has begun a seed record and seed store. A second Community member waters her garden with a rooftop rainwater harvesting setup.

What we learned

• The first year was for relationships. Getting to know the group is what now lets the network expand.
• Home-scale models are ready to scale. Seed saving, rainwater harvesting, and record-keeping proven at the household level, with social media already generating interest, are the template for a community-scale system.

Featured by the Indian Health Service

Rooted in Culture: Native Foods of America

Indian Health Service campaign graphic, Rooted in Culture: Native Foods of America.

Gila River Indian Community member and IHS employee Rebecca Moffett is cultivating more than a garden: she is helping strengthen Indigenous food sovereignty and preserve traditional Indigenous foods. Located just south of Phoenix, Arizona, the Gila River Indian Community is where Rebecca's first garden has grown into a passion rooted in perseverance, learning, and community support. Today, she cultivates traditional and seasonal crops, including O'otham lima beans, Hopi watermelons, tomatoes, okra, and gourds, and finds her greatest joy in watching new life emerge from the soil. Through her dedication, Rebecca continues the farming tradition of her ancestors, the Huhugam, who historically farmed along the Gila River.

Follow along as IHS continues to celebrate the history, cultural significance, and health benefits of traditional Indigenous foods in our campaign, Rooted in Culture: Native Foods of America. #EatRealFood

Excerpted from the Indian Health Service campaign Rooted in Culture: Native Foods of America. Text and image reproduced with attribution.

Countless events, and one consistent request

Together the cohort has put on countless events across the year, from panels and design talks to markets and river gatherings, hosted in each other's venues and fed by each other's vendors. The community feedback is consistent, and it is the same across every group: more.

What the ecosystem taught us together

Sample sign, Design Empowerment PHX. The rivers are cut clear through the steel, so the light passes from one watershed into the next.

Our greatest takeaway

Our watersheds are connected, and we need to remember our connection to them

Design Empowerment's sample sign makes the pilot's central lesson something you can hold. The Colorado, Little Colorado, Verde, Agua Fria, Salt, Gila, San Pedro, and Santa Cruz are cut through a single plate of steel, because that is what they are: one system, not eight separate amenities managed by whoever holds the nearest jurisdiction.

Everything else in this report follows from that. The river systems tour worked because it put people inside the connection. The signage work moves at the pace of consent because names carry the connection. The foodways network grows because water, seed, and people are the same story. What the cohort learned to do organizationally, the watershed has been doing all along.

Where 2026 takes us