For the Kinship with Water series with Collective Acceleration
INTRO:
In 2024 I was invited to make art in response to a four-part workshop series called Kinship with Water. The series was led by Tannia Esparza, Omar Brownson, Jovida Ross, and Kelly Miller and hosted by Collective Acceleration as a:
“facilitated space, to share ritual with elders and land-centered leaders, deepen our practice and relationship with water, inspire collective strategies and actions toward protecting and nourishing our water in and outside of our homeplaces.”
Every two weeks over two months, I attended the series and participated in the suggested water practices. To fulfill my artist commission, I made a watercolor collage in response to each session.
why now? it’s over two years later!
This was one of my first invitations to having a true Kinship with Water, and I needed a lot of time and space to process what they meant to me. It has taken me time to…
- Feel Water
- Track Water across my memories
- Set up my altar with my Water/ocean items
- Visit Lake Michigan over and over in all seasons
- Start hydrating myself more
- Start hydrating my snake more
It took me a couple of years, but i am now understanding / accepting that i am a Water person.
i am a water person:
I have long questioned what kind of person I am. When I was young, I struggled to be Christian like my parents raised me to be. When I was in my 20s, I struggled to be Asian-American in a racialized world. Now, I struggle to understand what it means for me to be a descendant of all of my ancestors: the ones who are Indigenous to the Ryukyus, yes, but ALSO my Han ancestors who migrated to Taiwan 100s of years ago (where they were assigned multiple national identities over the years), AND the ancestors who traded their local identities to become Japanese. All of these lineages eventually traded parts of themselves to become American on other’s lands, and I was born of all of them.
Looking at myself from a National POV (Taiwanese! Japanese! American!) helps me understand myself in relationship to, and then challenge Empires. But if i only view my ancestors by their Nationalities, i am left feeling like a bunch of scraps, or like a shallow-rooted seedling trying to endure root shock. When I feel this way, insecure and ungrounded, my organizing, my relationships, and my art all suffer.
The archipelagos of all of my ancestors are deeply connected by imperialism, conquer, assimilation (cultural genocide), and exploitation. But they are also connected by the Water. And currents, and ecosystems, and trade, and cultural exchange. My ancestors ate from the ocean, worshiped beings of the ocean, stayed put because of the ocean, feared the power of the ocean. My lineages are full of stories of Water.
Water was there with me when I was being raised Christian, when I was struggling to understand being Asian. As baths, as lakes, as ecosystems, as blood, Water has always been there.
Understanding myself as a Water person has helped me flow between and around the limits of Nation, and root my sense of self in relationships: both between myself and others, as well as between myself and the land.
And much of this work started at these workshops.
MY 2026 RECOUNTINGS OF THE KINSHIP WITH WATER SERIES (part 1)
WORKSHOP ONE, ELDER WATER April 17th, 2024
Led by Elder Kathy “Wan Povi” Sanchez, Tewa Women United, and Elder Maria Morin McCoy, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.
“Water is our oldest elder, the longest story, the long arc of our collective memory. How can we love and respect water as our wise elder? What does water have to teach us?”
Much of this session was storytelling from Elder Kathy and Elder Maria. I cannot capture the depths & nuance of what they shared, so I offer a summary to my understanding: Elder Maria told a sacred story of Nibiinaabe, a “mermaid” of Lake Michigan, which was exciting for me to hear as a denizen of that particular lake. Elder Kathy spoke at length about Water as our first ancestor, it connects us to all of our ancestors (Water in the womb).
![This series is gathered in part to respond to the poisoning of Redhill in HI.
There is no source of water that is separate from other water.
Honor elder water by bringing water into our dreams
Water is our oldest ancestor, elder [water] holds the collective memory of our lives.
Elder Water - Still Water - Headwater - Flowing Water
Elder Maria McCoy Elder Kathy Sanchez
Unrecorded to honor sacredness, be present
- paths to cosmic memories of future mind
- drempt into being by our ancestors
- we are born from our mother’s water
- we carry an aura/field that emanates from our soul/spirit](https://i0.wp.com/corilin.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fliers.png?resize=810%2C1024&ssl=1)
This series is gathered in part to respond to the poisoning of Redhill in HI.
There is no source of water that is separate from other water.
Honor elder water by bringing water into our dreams
Water is our oldest ancestor, elder [water] holds the collective memory of our lives.
Elder Water – Still Water – Headwater – Flowing Water
Elder Maria McCoy Elder Kathy Sanchez
Unrecorded to honor sacredness, be present
-paths to cosmic memories of future mind
-drempt into being by our ancestors
-we are born from our mother’s water
-we carry an aura/field that emanates from our soul/spirit
Some lessons I learned:
- Water is our oldest ancestor, elder [water] holds the collective memory of our lives. Literally, Water is what made it possible for this planet to foster life. The very first cells of life came into being within Water, made up of Water. Billions of years later… that same Water is still around! And has imprints of all the lives that it has lived inside of.
- There is no source of water that is separate from other water. Also literally, all water on earth is connected via the water cycle. It almost never leaves the earth’s atmosphere, so the same water has been cycling and transforming for billions of years. At some point or another, all the water cells have been intermixed on earth. Even the water in us!!!
- Call to return to Lunar Time, time cycles that are felt in the Water inside of us.
THE ART
This piece was my artistic response to the first session. Watercolor is one of the most regular ways I’ve have been in relationship with Water, so it was an obvious choice for these collages. I used collage because I didn’t plan the final compositions, rather I painted a series of shapes inspired by stories and ecosystems brought up by the speakers, and then built the final image using those elements.
This collage visualizes the sacred stories told by Elder Maria’s and Elder Kathy’s. I wanted to show a being that could be a person, but could *also* possibly have fins, floating in a womb of water. The large moon invokes the lunar cycles of time. I included pebble and guppies from my experiences at Lake Michigan’s Pebble Beach and Hollywood Beach. The Nibiinaabe holds a sacred bundle, which elder Kathy said we all have within us from the time we are born, a connection to our ancestors. It’s one of my favorite things to try to paint beings that seem “real” and “unreal” depending on how you’re looking at them.
The model for this image is my sister, Kristi.
WORKSHOP TWO, STILL WATER May 1st, 2024
Led by Rebeka Ndosi, Maji ya Chai Land Sanctuary and Malia Collins, writer and storyteller
“Stillness in water, water that both holds and is held. How might we honor the water inside of us and around us? How could that deepen our practice and attention?”
In this session, Rebeka and Malia shared stories from the Watersheds where they live, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Again, my memory and interpretations can’t do this session justice, but some of the lessons I learned were that:
- Stillness is a significant part of any cycle.
- Water is inside of me, I am a part of Water
- Winter stillness is required in order for new energy to burst forth in Spring. (In some climates, anyway!)
- In TCM, the water element follows our kidney and bladder meridians. To foster awareness to the cycles of water in my own body.
- We are the elder water and headwaters at the same time. We are both descendant and ancestor at the same time. (!!!)
THE ART
My collage features aspects of Lake Superior and the dark forests of Hawai’i, the home waters of speakers Rebeka and Malia, respectively. The Hāpuʻu (Cibotium menziesii), Hawaiian Tree Fern, link to Malia’s home, and the Lake Superior gems, the agates, link to Rebeka’s memories of Water. On the figure I’ve highlighted the Kidney and bladder meridians, which Rebeka identified for us during session.
My favorite part of this illustration by far is of the agates, which are MAGICAL gemstones that were created during the creation of North America and the Great Lakes.
The model for this image was my friend, Isaiah.
CLOSING, FOR NOW, ON IREI NO HI
Two years later, I return to these teachings with a lot of gratitude, feeling that I am further in the River of Time than when I made these notes.
When I started this blog post back in February, I didn’t know why I needed to spend time with these Water lessons. Beyond affirming to myself that I am a Water person, I also was feeling the need to bring Water into my organizing and community work more fully. While this blog series is taking me *much* longer than I originally planned, I have been siting with my flows, and the flow of people around me, and things! are! moving! in! their! own! time!
The day I finished this post just happened to be Irei no Hi, or the day of memory for those killed at the Battle of Okinawa, and is a day to console the dead. This upcoming Sunday, I’m planning a Water Ceremony with my comrades/dōshi in Chicago2Okinawa. We want to to honor Irei no Hi, console our dead, and make a connection between us is in the diaspora to those in militarized islands across the seas. We are interpreting some Ryukyuan traditions for our context and I will be bringing some of the Water lessons from Elders Kathy & Maria with me! I can’t tell exactly what we’re shaping, but I know moving together in ceremony is how I want to start.
There are two more paintings in this series, and I hope to share them soon. But I can tell that they will happen in their own time >u<
-cori nakamura lin, june 23rd, 2026
with thanks to anne, chuey, sam, and katie who reviewed an early version of this essay, and jj, who’s co-writing & feedback made finishing it possible