RIVERS

Our Mission

Give rivers a voice.

It all started with a simple question: How do we give rivers a voice?

Since then, we have been on a journey to build a platform rooted in connection and unique knowledge for river-curious people. Those who join us in the world of RIVERS become immersed in the interconnection between human story and moving water.

RIVERS VALUES

HONOR THE SOURCE

all life shares this water.

EMBRACE GRAVITY

With downstream momentum a river always finds it's path.

UNCOVER THE PAST

Rivers have shaped human stories since the very beginning.

CARVE THE FUTURE

Our stories create new channels for the future of freshwater.

ALL WITH REVERENCE

From this feeling, RIVERS has grown outwards. Each river is part of a vast, network. The veins of the earth that connect mountains to oceans, people to place, and past to future. To follow a river is to move between scales: the intimate and the planetary, the personal and the collective.

RIVERS exists in this space between the local and the global. Rooted in the Nooksack Watershed, our work flows beyond basins, guided by values shaped by rivers everywhere on the planet.

Our Orientation within the Nooksack Watershed

RIVERS is based on the traditional and unceded lands of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi Nation), Nooksack, and other Coast Salish peoples, who have lived in relationship with the waters of the Salish Sea basin since time immemorial. As neighbors and guests, we situate our work locally on the Nooksack River and across river basins worldwide with responsibility and respect for the collective futures of the cultures, communities, and more-than-human relations connected to these shared waters.

For guidance on ongoing work rooted in truth-telling and Indigenous leadership in our home watershed, we will always direct our growing audience to the work of organizations and collectives who are leading these most important efforts: Children of the Setting Sun, Whiteswan Environmental, Se'Si'Le

Our Team

We are a coalescence of global river relationships that have shaped us as creators, artists and thinkers. Today, RIVERS is a small team of filmmakers, expedition kayakers, writers and doers. We do our very best to operate within our values based model to create, share, and document ethics driven stories.

Willie Henkel

Creative Director
Willie, is an ethnohydrologist, filmmaker, and expedition kayaker whose work explores the entanglements of water and culture. Through visual storytelling, he examines how rivers become sites of meaning, conflict and resistance within complex social and ecological systems.

Wyatt Doyle

Director of Moving Image Shaped by a lifetime with rivers, Wyatt is a fisherman, competitive kayaker, and filmmaker devoted to capturing the human stories carried by moving water.

RIVERS - Est. 2025 - Bellingham Wa, USA