His Navajo clan is all about water. He's using film to figure out what that means.
It's his way of giving back.
Keanu Jones is a young Navajo filmmaker from Great Falls, Arizona, a community on the Little Colorado River.
His short film "Giving Back The Navajo Way" won him a trip to the White House for the second annual White House Student Film Festival.
His was one of 14 other films selected from over 1,500 submissions. In his film, he talks about how in Navajo culture, giving back is always being of service to your elders.
In his case, that's helping his grandmother.
But Keanu also has other ideas about why making films is important.
He wants to educate young people on the reservation about water because they are all in danger of losing it.
In early 2012, Arizona Sens. John Kyl and John McCain introduced legislation (SB 2109) that said Navajo and Hopi people would relinquish their claims to water in the Little Colorado River in exchange for infrastructure projects that would deliver water to people's homes.
The bill was voted down because many village elders came out against it, saying that a permanent waiver of rights to water was dangerous for the tribes' future well-being. (In addition, they didn't like that the settlement would provide an existing coal-fired electricity plant access to land as well as water for processing coal until the year 2044.)
The issue is not dead, though. There's an old saying in the West, "Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting." After years of drought, that's truer than ever. Some tribal members support the settlement because they say tribes need the help building the basic infrastructure to deliver water.
Keanu wants to make films to educate young Navajo people about water and what it means to them both for bodily sustenance and spiritually.