Tom Gleeson, Ella Martindale, Jennifer Shepherd, David Serrano, Q’utxulenukhw Tim Kulchyski, Tuwuxuwul't-hw Tyrone Elliott, e campbell

Xwulqw'selu Sta'lo' is a culturally significant and salmon-bearing river facing significant challenges which Cowichan Tribes and the British Columbia Provincial Government are addressing with a first-of-its-kind watershed plan. Our research is deeply situated at Xwulqw'selu Sta'lo' and is grounded in interdisciplinary academic spheres of place-based research, water monitoring and modeling, co-governance and systems theory. Our project is an example of developing a deliberate, robust and responsive community science project designed to engage community, impact decision making and respectfully work together in place, on the land. We describe developing and initiating our project and share a visual representation of how we structure our project as ‘woven statements’. The five statements give our research project team a shared understanding and motivation and help us plan and make decisions. The statements can be visualized as vertical warps interwoven with research projects, goals and partnerships as horizontal wefts. The warps and wefts mutually support each other since weaving gains strength where warp and weft meet, connect and overlap. Key lessons include the importance of taking responsibility for positionality, knowledge and relationships; the value of intention-setting that reflects the context and the priorities of partners and community; and that projects can flourish if structured around the good present in community.