Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability Okinawan Journal of Island Studies University of the Ryukyus 4.2 (May 2023): 174-181 OJIS https://riis.skr.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/publication/ojis ISSN: 2435-3302 Forum A Convergence of Hands and Waters Weaving Relations and Resistances Karin Louise Hermes* DOI : https://doi.org/10.24564/0002019691 On September 2, 2022, Theresa “Isa” Arriola and Jacinta “Cinta” Kaipat launched their “Affect and Colonialism” (AAC) virtual video project Everyday Life in an Imperial Archipelago from Germany (Arriola and Kaipat 2022a). Alongside their seven minute and thirty second video is a posted description that explains that: [Their digital project] explores the varied, complex and ambivalent experiences of the Indigenous Chamorro and Refaluwasch peoples in an area of the Western Pacific that comprises a highly strategic location for United States military training and testing. We highlight the role of art and music in these everyday experiences alongside our engagement with the US Military’s many environmental plans that seek to alter our lands and cultural identities for generations to come. (Arriola and Kaipat 2022b) Filipina Assistant Professor Rosa Cordillera Castillo, one of the AAC project coordinators, invited me to join with Isa Arriola for the panel discussion. In 2016, I had become friends with Castillo during a Berlin protest at the Brandenburg Gate. In 2022, she was crucial to my degree when on my PhD defense committee at Humboldt University of Berlin. The launch event was a storytelling evening for Arriola to introduce their website project (Affect and Colonialism 2022) and also included another friend, Māori poet, songwriter, and researcher Hinemoana Baker. My role was to engage with parts of my research on Hawai‘i-Philippines-Oceania and global climate justice solidarities, for which I theorized a “spirit of relationality” that revolves around spirit and “invisible” sources of knowledge and relations. It is also congruent with the Andean cosmology or relationality of pacha (spacetime) to other shores of the Pacific Ocean, a relationality invisible –––––––––––––––––––– * Postdoctoral Researcher with the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences at Leibniz University Hannover. She has lived in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Hawai‘i, and is currently based in Germany.