![Sunset in Seoul along the Cheonggyecheon stream. Image by Stefan K on Unsplash.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/stefan-k-RwXMIzkHIpo-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=330%2C220&ssl=1)
![Sunset in Seoul along the Cheonggyecheon stream. Image by Stefan K on Unsplash.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/stefan-k-RwXMIzkHIpo-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=330%2C220&ssl=1)
![Defensoras and allies on retreat in Celendín. Image courtesy of Natalia Guzmán Solano.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMG_0343-scaled-e1706760428782.jpg?fit=330%2C206&ssl=1)
Formless Like Water: Defensoras and the Work of Water Protection
By Natalia Guzmán Solano. In this article, I write about defensoras del agua y medio ambiente, water and environmental defenders: the women participating in an anti-extractivist struggle in northern Peru, defending water against the expansion of a large-scale mining operation in Celendín’s headwaters which mobilized a social movement against state and corporate forces attempting to expand the Yanacocha mine to nearby territory.
![Women working at a laundry site at Ch'onggye Stream, circa 1930s.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/cheonggyecheon-2b-e1667843260364.jpg?fit=330%2C202&ssl=1)
Women and Urban Waterways in Korean Modernist Literature
Pak T’ae-wŏn’s 1938 modernist novel Scenes from Ch’ŏnggye Stream (Ch’ŏnbyŏn p’unggyŏng, 천변풍경) is one thought-provoking example of these human-environment relationships in literature. Scenes from Ch’ŏnggye Stream provides an intimate portrayal of ordinary life for lower-class Koreans living along the Ch’ŏnggye Stream in a rapidly urbanizing and modernizing 1930s Seoul under Japanese occupation; it reveals how environmental, social, and political factors can mingle together to influence urban river environments and culture.
![Swimming pool at AUT Millenium training center, Aukland, New Zealand. Image by Artem Verbo on Unsplash.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/artem-verbo-rAyIvNqlwCY-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=330%2C186&ssl=1)
Washed Up
Every summer in my childhood my parents took me and my sister to beaches in Maine, mountain lakes in our home state of New Hampshire, and our uncle’s pool in Massachusetts just over the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border. Once the last towel was unloaded from the car, we’d rip off the clothing covering our bathing suits and race to water as if it was simply a mirage, wavering and threatening to disappear.
![A view of San Francisco from the bay from the water with just us and the seals. Image courtesy of Norman Hantzsche.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Seals-e1667922473359.jpg?fit=330%2C176&ssl=1)
Open Water
![Memorial event for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Winnipeg, July 2015. Image courtesy of Caroline Doenmez.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/fig_1.jpg?fit=330%2C220&ssl=1)
Resonant Rivers: Water, Indigenous Relationality, and Other Futures
Two sets of rivers in what is now known as Canada are vital actors in urban landscapes. The McIntyre and Kaministiquia Rivers in Thunder Bay, Ontario and the Assiniboine and Red Rivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba are sites of colonial violence and disappearance: in both cities, dead Indigenous people have been pulled from their depths.
![Bde Wakan/Misi-zaaga'iganiing (Mille Lacs Lake), a place my family always returns to. Image courtesy of Racquel Banaszak.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Misizaagaiiganiing_RBanasak_-1-scaled-e1667577213890.jpg?fit=330%2C209&ssl=1)
We Are On Dakhóta Land: A Review of Diane Wilson’s The Seed Keeper
![2022 / Mississippi Park Connection’s program, Kayaking While BIPOC, on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Image courtesy of Lee Vue.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2022-Kayaking-While-BIPOC_Mississippi-River-scaled.jpg?fit=330%2C220&ssl=1)
Water Memories: Exploring Our Relationship With Water
!["Niimaamaa" sculpture in Winnipeg by artists KC Adams, Jaimie Isaac and Val Vint (2018). Image courtesy of Caroline Fidan Tyler Doenmez.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMG_5887-scaled-e1667845196392.jpeg?fit=330%2C177&ssl=1)
Women & Water: Inspiration and Resources
![African woman carrying fish in a basket on her head on the local market in Assomada, Santiago. A large number of West African women rely on the blue economy to survive. MaaikeZaal/GettyImages.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/maaike_zaal_getty_images-scaled.jpg?fit=330%2C220&ssl=1)