This article examines how local knowledge about riverine ecologies influenced the production of expert, gendered, and ethnic identities, and interrogates how these identities and knowledges are ‘co-produced’. Drawing on work in feminist political ecology and science studies, I highlight the links between the production of knowledge and identity. Research was carried out through fieldwork in two villages along the Salween River, at the border between Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), where residents participated in ‘Villager Research’. Here, residents identify as members of ethnic minority groups, mainly the Karen, and undertake a variety of livelihood activities, including fishing, swidden agriculture, rice farming, and entrepreneurial trade. Much of the impetus for residents to undertake the work of local knowledge production was to have a say in the decision-making processes of large-scale developments proposed on the river which would impact these livelihoods. What I examine is how these efforts also obscured women's participation in fishing and in research because their predominant practices associated with fishing involved income-producing activities instead of romanticized subsistence activities. I also consider some of the critiques from the Karen women’s group who identified subsistence-focused work as ‘not enough’ in that it does not generate much needed income and is ‘not secure’. These efforts accomplished a particular kind of village expert, to the exclusion of Karen women in its documentation, even in a project led by villagers and situated within an ethnic minority community which is matriarchal.