Steps toward Kinship

Abstract In this essay, Ybarra shares her experience of the Nibi Walk as one way to conceptualize practices of accountability and critical solidarity across cultures and modes of being, including the way the Nibi Walk's structure fundamentally disrupts concepts of linearity. Although Ybarra continues to ask some of the same questions she had when she first entered into the water walking ceremony, she gathers a bit more experience and knowledge every time she returns to the circle, every time she finds a different path into the inquiry. What she first learned growing up surrounded by Mexican American storytellers becomes confirmed without a doubt—that questions are more about the asking and the process of listening than they are about any particular answer. Reaching for justice and taking steps toward kinship takes humility before an ever-spiraling cyclical process.