Jul 22, 2026
Welcome to my Beloved Himiyána. Where Stories Are Memory, Survival, and Advocacy.
Storyteller: Suraida Nañez-James
Written by: Haleemah Atobiloye
Memory of the Bay, in Corpus Christi
"Laughing gulls are silly birds," Suraida laughs, watching one land against the wind. It cups its wings, feet already reaching, and settles on the white plaster ridge of the Corpus Christi bayfront. It is late August, and the gulls are shedding their summer hoods, their heads fading to the color of a smudged thumbprint. Below the sweeping arches of the open-air pavilion, a woman frozen in bronze at twenty-three leans against a column with her hair falling past her shoulders and her eyes fixed permanently toward the water.
Suraida knows this spot well: Mirador de la Flor on Corpus Christi's bayfront. Here the bronze statue of Selena Quintanilla has been standing for nearly three decades. Always surrounded by mosaic roses, wind-stripped palm trees rooted firmly in the wet earth, the well wishes of thousands of strangers, and the company of gulls. This is the first place her family brings guests. "These birds wait for visitors to drop french fries, acting out the exact same hunger that once brought them to the piles of discarded seashells left behind by the first peoples who ate seafood here. They think we don't know their game."
The constantly moving water Selena looks at, past the perfectly constructed shoreline and the marina crowded with docked boats, is where the ocean refuses to be tamed. Choppy, relentless whitecaps throw themselves against the sloped seawall, leaving dark, wet traces of algae and sea debris clinging to the lowest steps. A daily reminder that the sea is always working, wearing down whatever line we draw for it.
The physical waters of the Gulf of Mexico are much older than the communities that line its shores. But Corpus Christi Bay, fed by the Nueces River, is younger than the first human communities that watched it form. Twelve thousand years ago, the Nueces ran down a valley to a sea that stood far lower than it does now. Then the ice let go, the sea climbed, and the river's mouth went under. What Corpus Christi calls its bay is a drowned valley, a river the sea swallowed. For Suraida, this bay is a physical reminder that human efforts to wholly conquer and control this landscape have historically been met, and will continue to be met, with unshakeable resistance.
Survival of and within the Gulf
The first undeniable law of the Gulf: respect water. It is as beautiful as it is terrifying.
The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin. A vast and low place that catches everything. Long before anyone built a home on its edges, the rivers were already carrying the middle of the continent downstream. So when fertilizer from an Iowa soybean field, pesticide runoff from the Ohio Valley, and nitrogen from Illinois feedlots wash down every summer to feed an algae bloom that suffocates a stretch of water until nothing can breathe in it, that is not the Gulf turning on Texas. That is a basin doing exactly what a basin does with what it is given.
Beneath the layers of salt, mud, sand, and silt that flow into the Gulf and build up as sediment are oil and natural gas, formed by extreme heat and pressure from ancient sea life trapped deep underground. The discovery of that crude oil, prized as black gold, triggered a rush to the coast that never ended. For the people signing the paperwork, this extraction was a season of generational wealth building. For the people who call here home, it has been a lifetime of carrying the generational weight of an ecosystem stripped for parts.
Long after the current oil leases expire, the basin will still be taking in the runoff. And the families and wildlife left in the shadow of these refineries will still be holding the true cost in their bodies: in chronic asthma, in respiratory disease, in elevated rates of cancer, in contaminated seafood, and in generational poverty.
Advocacy with, for, and from the fencelines and frontlines
In 2020, Suraida started the Gulf Reach Institute. She had been a science teacher and a consultant with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when she and her family decided it was time to begin creating leaders from underrepresented voices in the Gulf. Most of their programs are designed with and for children, youth, and families from low-income communities.
Going outside in the middle of July 2026 in Corpus Christi is what Suraida imagines the brief gap between when the heart stops pumping blood and the soul leaves the body feels like. The heat sits heavy, and the air quality sits at dangerous levels. "I wish I could take the kids outdoors. Instead, we have to wait until the weather is slightly cooler." She is planning a trip for children who live along Refinery Row, the fifteen-mile stretch of industrial development that is one of the thickest concentrations of oil refineries in the United States, to teach them where their water comes from.
"I am going there with toothbrushes and shampoo. My friend has already dropped off diapers and formula for the mothers. The children I teach do not know where their water comes from. They know the faucet. They do not know the aquifer, or the drought, or the fact that someone wants to build a data center in their city that already has a water crisis. They do not know any of this, yet. And they are not supposed to, because they are children, and they are hungry. So I feed them first, then make sure of their hygiene, then begin science education," she explains.
When she teaches the water cycle, she intentionally runs the field trips backward: the Gulf first, then the estuary, then the freshwater, and finally the Red Sun Ranch, where the trees and soil complete the cycle. One body of water, traced from the vastness of the sea back to the tap. The children learn that the water in the bay is the water under the refinery, which is the water in the faucet, which is the water in their bodies. "It is physically impossible to edit the Gulf out of our bodies. Every action permanently reshapes life for all of us who create homes in these coastal areas. The health of water cannot be separated from the health of people."
The harm is structural. The water cycle education gap is not an accident; it is a carefully packaged product. An economy that extracts this much from its waters requires a population that cannot trace where the water goes and what it holds, just as European settlers clearing this coast in the nineteenth century required a population that believed it was occupied by savages who needed to be killed. The historical markers did that work with colonization; the school curriculums do it with omission. But learning from the resilience of ancestors who refused to be silenced, these communities continue to keep and share records.
They remember September 14, 1919, when the deadly hurricane of that year pushed the Gulf up over the barrier islands, drowning the low neighborhoods so fast that people who went to bed dry drowned in their homes. They remember April 20, 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon rig killed eleven men and bled nearly five million barrels of oil into the sea for eighty-seven days. They remember March 31, 2026, when a federal committee stripped protections from every endangered creature in the Gulf, including the Rice's whale, an endemic species with a population of only thirty-three, so that oil could move faster.
They also remember their wins. On July 25, 2026, in a 72-acre coastal park on the western shore of Oso Bay, the Karankawa Tribe of Texas physically took down the 1976 historical marker that falsely labeled them extinct. “Anybody educated in Texas had wrongly learned that the ancestors of the Karankawa were primitive savages,” Suraida shares. “But that day, the descendants of the tribe put up a new sign, affirming their deep ancestral ties, correcting decades of colonial myth, and declaring themselves a living community in South Texas. In a time of erasure, it was a victory of truth over erasure.”
So when a spill is called a "disaster," or a dead zone is called a "tragedy," or a drowning coastline is grieved as though the sea simply made a decision, these Gulf communities know it is a choice made by a person in an office, and the blame is quietly being reassigned to the climate. And nobody has to answer for an event tagged a natural disaster. "We will continue to remember, document, and demand a healthy life for all."
Stories from the Gulf
"There is so much here," Suraida asserts. By much, she means home. She also means industry. "All of it is easy to love. Family. Sea creatures. Coastlines. To truly live in, and steward, this landscape is to accept both its danger and its profound, rhythmic joy. Corpus is simply one small part of the bigger magic." Stewardship here starts from accepting the water, not fearing it.
And in the hazy, golden warmth of a late afternoon with cooler weather, relaxing at the edge of the bay with her family, Suraida listens to the motion of the sea hitting the seawall. It sounds like a heavy drum kit added to Selena's Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. She tells her daughter, Evelyn, that before the track became a polished pop song, its first lyrics were about a cheerful fish swimming freely in this very sea, and she promises to show Evelyn a clip she found on Facebook when they get home.
The Gulf, its people, its wildlife, and everything in its environment are very much alive. Alongside the looming water crises, the data center expansions, the skyrocketing storm insurance, and the ever-present threat of hurricanes, there is still the profound privilege of windsurfing, fishing, kayaking, family, and experiencing community along these coastlines.
Stories from the Gulf will continue to be collected and told. Because, in this home, stories are memory, survival, and advocacy.
Welcome.
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Glossary
Himiyána is the documented word for water in Aranama, an Indigenous language once spoken along the Guadalupe River in what is now Texas. The language faded before it could be fully recorded and is considered unclassified; nearly all that survives of it is the word for water and a single recorded phrase, himiána tsáyi: "Give me water." It was preserved in 1884 by the same informant who gave linguists their short vocabulary of Karankawa.
The Gulf refers to the Gulf of Mexico. And now, by federal order, the Gulf of America.
About the Storyteller
Suraida Nañez-James is the CEO and founder of the Gulf Reach Institute, based in Corpus Christi, Texas, and co-lead of the Ocean for All Work Group within the America the Beautiful for All Coalition.
About the Writer
Haleemah Atobiloye is an applied social scientist. As the Program and Communications Strategist for the Children’s Environmental Health Network, seconded to the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, she translates complex conservation and health issues into human-centered narratives that inspire collective action.
About the Coalition
The America the Beautiful for All Coalition is a national coalition of 300+ member organizations stewarding nature in a manner that upholds environmental justice and protects public health.
This story was shared with permission. The storyteller maintained editorial review rights over their narrative.
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