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Ko Wai Koe? Who Are Your Waters?
What the rivers that shaped us might ask in return
This last month, I had the opportunity to hear Robert Macfarlane speak at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. I had read his work before, but it felt especially timely to have one of the world’s most recognized contemporary writers on rivers here in the Wood River Valley—a place whose identity is inseparable from its water.
There was not an empty seat in the Sun Valley Pavilion. Macfarlane began not with a lecture, but with an invitation.
For 90 seconds, we closed our eyes and sat in silence. He asked us to imagine a river we came from, a river with which we shared a special connection, or one that had come to mean something deeply personal in our lives.
I thought of the Deschutes River in Oregon.
I could smell the hot, dry sage along the canyon bottom. Beneath it was another scent that is harder to describe but instantly recognizable—the earthy, almost visceral smell of water mixing with organic matter, mud, and sun-warmed vegetation. Kind of off-putting, but also nostalgic and welcoming.
I pictured the sheer canyon walls, the dark basalt rocks radiating heat, and bighorn sheep grazing high above the river. I remembered the sudden jiggle of a steelhead at the end of my line—the rod shaking, adrenaline rising, the sense that something wild and powerful had briefly connected itself to me. I also remembered the rattlesnakes, sounding their warnings from among the rocks…
Then the 90 seconds ended.
We opened our eyes and returned to the Pavilion. Macfarlane asked us to turn to the person sitting next to us and describe our home water: what it looked like, how it felt, and why it mattered. It was a simple exercise, but it changed the way the Pavilion felt. Everyone struggled to mute their conversations. For a few moments, no one introduced themselves by occupation, hometown, or title.
We introduced ourselves through water.
After pondering this further, that introductory paradigm shift made plenty of sense, since humans are primarily made of water, and we all live in watersheds.
Macfarlane connected the exercise to a question associated with te ao Māori, the Māori worldview of Aotearoa New Zealand:
Ko wai koe?
The phrase is commonly translated as “Who are you?” But it can also carry a deeper, relational meaning:
Who are your waters?
The question reflects an understanding that identity does not exist separately from place. To describe who you are is also to describe the river, lake, coastline, mountain, community, and ancestry from which you come. After pondering this further, that introductory paradigm shift made plenty of sense, since humans are primarily made of water, and we all live in watersheds.
Who are your waters?
Are they the waters where you learned to fish?
The creek behind your childhood home?
The river where your family gathered?
The swimming hole where you spent summer afternoons?
For me, the answer is not limited to a single river.
The Deschutes is one of my waters. It shaped my understanding of wildness, patience, danger, and abundance. But so too is the Big Wood River—the waters that now shape my work, my community, and much of how I understand restoration.
We usually talk about rivers in practical terms.
How much water is flowing?
Is it clean?
Are there enough fish?
Is the floodplain connected?
Who holds the water rights?
These are necessary questions. They guide management, restoration, and policy.
But Ko wai koe? asks something different.
It asks us to consider not only what a river provides, but how it has shaped us.
A River Is More Than a Resource
Across many cultures, rivers are understood as more than channels that move water across a landscape.
They may be ancestors, relatives, sacred beings, or living presences with their own identity and agency. In Māori thought, the relationship between a people and a river is not merely symbolic. The river is woven into genealogy, community, and belonging.
Here’s some examples from other cultures:
Hindu traditions in India
The Ganges, or Ganga, is not simply a river but a goddess and a sacred presence. People bathe in her waters, make pilgrimages to her, and understand the river as spiritually purifying and life-giving. This is less about “personhood” in the Western legal sense and more about the river as a divine being.
Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities along the Atrato River
In Colombia, the Atrato River was recognized by the Constitutional Court as a rights-bearing legal entity, in large part reflecting the deep cultural relationship Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities have with the river and their dependence on its health for cultural survival.
Many Indigenous North American traditions
There is no single pan-Indigenous worldview, but many tribal nations understand rivers as relatives or living members of a broader community rather than inert property. The relationship often carries obligations of reciprocity: people care for the water because the water cares for them. That framing is very close to the Māori concept.
This idea asks us to move beyond viewing rivers as objects outside ourselves—resources to allocate, control, improve, or consume.
Instead, it invites us to think in terms of relationship.
A relationship carries benefits, but it also carries obligations.
If a river provides food, memory, livelihood, identity, recreation, and a sense of home, then our responsibility cannot end with asking what more it can provide.
We must also ask what it needs from us.
Science Is Catching Up
Modern river science increasingly describes rivers as connected, adaptive systems.
A river is not just the water between its banks. It includes groundwater, tributaries, wetlands, floodplains, sediment, wood, plants, fish, insects, wildlife, and people. A change in one part of that system can ripple through the rest.
Restoration practitioners often use the word connectivity to describe this.
We reconnect a stream to its floodplain.
We reconnect fish to spawning habitat.
We reconnect surface water with groundwater.
We reconnect fragmented habitats across a riverscape.
But perhaps restoration also offers an opportunity to reconnect people with rivers—not only physically, through trails and access, but emotionally and culturally.
Because people are more likely to care for places they understand themselves to be part of.
Who Are the Waters of the Wood River Valley?
Here in the Wood River Valley, our waters shape nearly every part of community life.
They support fish and wildlife.
They irrigate fields and gardens.
They provide drinking water.
They influence where we build, how we recreate, and what this valley feels like through each season.
The Big Wood River, Warm Springs Creek, Trail Creek, the Little Wood River, Silver Creek, and the smaller tributaries between them are not simply features on a map.
They are part of the identity of this place.
For some, that connection begins with fishing. For others, it comes from walking a dog beside the river, watching a child throw stones from the bank, seeing cottonwood leaves move in the wind, or noticing the first return of water to a side channel in spring.
These experiences can seem ordinary.
But over time, they become part of who we are.
"It’s an unmodified river that some good friends and I have adventured up, from the confluence to the headwaters"
Chad Stoesz - Lands Program Director
"Home to the fifth oldest tree in the world, there's lots of magic and wisdom to soak in from this ancient swamp. This bald cypress forest has seen me through lots of chapters of life and I will always be grateful for the still moments sitting in the tannin waters, listening to prothonotary warblers sing"
Michelle Ly - Stewardship Coordinator
What Do We Owe Our Waters?
There is a tendency in conservation to begin with the problem.
Declining fish populations.
Disconnected floodplains.
Low summer flows.
Warmer water.
Degraded habitat.
Those challenges are real, and addressing them is central to the work of the Wood River Land Trust.
But perhaps another place to begin is with relationship. Before asking how to fix a river, we might ask why it matters to us.
Before measuring what has been lost, we might remember what the river has given.
And before deciding what the future should look like, we might consider what kind of relationship we want future generations to inherit.
When Robert Macfarlane asked us to close our eyes and remember a river, the water I saw was hundreds of miles away. But when I opened them, I returned to another watershed—one that now shapes my daily life and carries its own memories, responsibilities, and possibilities. Perhaps that is the real power of the question.
Ko wai koe?
It asks us to remember where we came from.
It asks us to notice the waters around us now.
And, quietly, it asks what kind of ancestor we intend to be for the rivers—and the people—who come after us.
Who are your waters? And if those waters are part of who you are, what do you owe them?
