What knowledge(s) and relationships are created when a group of Mapuche-Pewenche children get into their enclosed river through kayaking? To answer this question we will closely explore children’s experiences in Kayakimün, an environmental and kayaking school for Indigenous children of Alto BioBio (Chile) organised by the Interamerican NGO Ríos to Rivers and the organisation Malen Leubü. The Mapuche-Pewenche people living in the Alto BioBío highland used to live in a close relationship with their lived environment. They historically had a narrow relationship with their rivers, which were a source of food, fresh water, stories and encounters with the ngen - their master spirits. The construction of the Pangue and Ralco dams in the BioBío River by the energy company Endesa (now Enel) meant a drastic change in how people related to it. A river described to the ethnographer as “a dear friend, someone you could trust” was then described as a “dead” river, “untrusty, unpredictable”. In contrast to this progressive detachment, the sports initiative for children called Kayakimün (a word formed by ‘kayak’ and kimün, ‘knowledge, wisdom’ in Chedungun) is showing the potentialities of white-water sports in changing this loose relationship with the river, and learning its ecological and cultural significance. According to several children, kayaking is a sport that makes them challenge their fear towards the river and, at the same time, learn from it, and learn to care for the river and their friends. During the program, through embodied experiences with(in) the river, children enact cultural moral values (as the yamuwün, ‘respect’) towards people and non-human entities, which acknowledge the river as a being. This paper will draw on ethnographical observations done in Kayakimün, together with several interviews done with children part of the program, and a 12 months fieldwork in Alto BioBío.