Documenting the holistic, poetic and many layered understanding of being linked to water, this paper interweaves ethnographic insights with the socio-cosmic dualisms found at the heart of Timorese and other eastern archipelagic societies. Exploring the unique capacities of water in this particular regional environment, and the ways that people connect with and adapt to it, expands our understanding of the productive frictions and efficacy of these spiritual ecologies and the ways in which such an inclusive human-nature sociality actually works. It is argued that water is central to both the expression of cosmological ideas and the understanding of life itself.

Chapter from book 'Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development'