Waterways is a place-based project that thinks about bodies of water and the lives they sustain. In our current age of climate crisis, communities of color that live near water are among the most vulnerable humans on the planet. But this vulnerability did not simply happen at random; it has a long history that we trace to the sixteenth century, with the advent of colonialism and racial capitalism. Waterways aims to broaden public understanding of these long histories and the diverse communities they impact by bringing together a broad coalition of scholars, artists, teachers, tribal and community leaders. Through community-based research workshops, curriculum development subawards, artist residencies, and website development, this project endeavors to imagine new forms of just worldbuilding that can begin the reparative work of redressing the ongoing racial and environmental injustices of the early modern past.