How the book works and why the book matters
Do children belong at protests? Can children participate meaningfully in activist movements?
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have a protected right to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of peaceful assembly — in short, the right to protest.
However, adults often underestimate children’s abilities to understand political issues and participate in social activism. The belief that children lack reasoning skills, rights, and agency is an example of childism, which Kathy Short defines as “the ways in which children are discriminated against by adults” (Short 138).
Short writes that the “subtle lack of respect for children’s abilities and capacities to make decisions about their life circumstances and to make contributions to society . . . can lead to overprotection that limits children’s enactment of agency and restricts opportunities for children to contribute to society in the present moment, not just once they become adults” (138).
Every child has the right to use their voice and deserves opportunities to participate in decision-making that affects their community.
Picturebooks play an important role in promoting children’s civic rights and responsibilities (Short 137). Short argues that there is a need for picturebooks that portray children taking action for social change because “These books provide demonstrations that children, not just adults, are responsible for and capable of social action” (137).
We Are Water Protectors has the potential to empower children to become activists and make meaningful changes in their communities. The book offers a window into a world that values children’s voices and contributions to activist movements — especially those of Indigenous children. To support the book’s transformative potential, parents and educators should consider diving deeper into the root causes of oil pipeline protests when they discuss the book with children.
Indigenous Perspectives on Childism
The belief that children lack power and agency is rooted in Western understandings of childhood. In many Indigenous cultures, children have always been valued for their civic contributions. However, settler-colonial society devalues Indigenous voices, especially those of children.
Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes that “In the pre-colonial Nishnaabeg nation, children were highly respected people, valued for their insights, their humour, and their contributions to families and communities at each stage of their lives. Children were seen as Gifts, and parenting was an honour. Coming from the spirit-world at birth, children were considered to have great spiritual power — a kind of power highly respected among the Nishnaabeg. Adults had a lot to learn from these small teachers” (Simpson 123).
In Nishnaabeg thought, children are not “empty vessels in need of control, instruction, boundaries, and teaching” (Simpson 128). Instead, adults and children learn from each other. Children use their voices and make decisions not because adults permit them to, but because their abilities are respected and valued.
According to Simpson, “traditional Nishnaabeg parenting values” include “interdependence, non-interference, teaching by modeling, learning by doing” (130-31). The practice of non-interference empowers children to make their own decisions with guidance from supportive adults, both within the extended family and the wider community. Adults model proper behaviour to children through actions, story-telling, and traditional teachings.
Youth-Led Activism in We Are Water Protectors
We Are Water Protectors offers a window into a world in which children’s civic rights and responsibilities are respected. While the book can be empowering for all children, it functions as a mirror for Indigenous youths and asserts that Indigenous voices and traditional knowledge have a place in activist movements.
We Are Water Protectors tells the story of a young Indigenous girl’s transformation into an activist as she rallies her people to defend their village against the “black snake,” an oil pipeline that threatens to contaminate their sacred water source. Lindstrom was inspired to write the story by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies during the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline Protests.
The first spread in the book shows the girl and Nokomis, her grandmother, standing in a river. They are collecting water with other girls and women. As Carole Lindstrom writes in her author’s note, in Ojibwe culture, women are the traditional protectors of water. Nokomis teaches the girl that “Water is the first medicine . . . We come from water. It nourishes us inside our mother’s body. As it nourishes us here on Mother Earth. Water is sacred” (2-3).
The girl also learns from her people of a “black snake that will destroy the land. Spoil the water. Poison the plants and animals. Wreck everything in its path” (7-9). In another spread, Nokomis tells the story of the black snake to the girl and other children (10-11). The girl listens with rapt attention as her grandmother’s storytelling weaves the image of seven ancestors gathered around a fire, foretelling the black snake’s arrival.
Lindstrom explains that the spread refers to the Seven Fires Prophecy, which tells of a time when humans will have to choose between two paths: one that leads “toward peace and unity and a healthy Mother Earth” (Lindstrom 35), and one that ends in environmental destruction. To many Indigenous Nations, the latter path “is symbolized by the oil pipelines, the ‘black snakes’ that crisscross our lands, bringing destruction and harm . . . The prophecy is coming to life right before our eyes” (Lindstrom 35). “Now the black snake is here,” the girl says. “Its venom burns the land. Courses through the water. Making it unfit to drink” (13).
The traditional knowledge that the girl receives from Nokomis informs her decision to fight back against the black snake. Simpson writes that in Nishnaabeg communities, “Grandparents readily shared personal and traditional stories with younger family members as a mechanism for gently guiding children into behaving appropriately” (Simpson 134). Knowing that water is sacred and “Runs through [her] people’s veins” (6), the girl prepares herself to take a stand. “TAKE COURAGE!” she tells herself. “I must keep the black snake away / From my village’s water. I must rally my people together. To stand for the water. To stand for the land. To stand as ONE” (15-16).
Drag the image below and click the purple buttons to learn more about the power of this illustration (p. 15-16) in We Are Water Protectors!
Significantly, no one tries to stop the girl from becoming a Water Protector. No one tells her that she’s too young, or it’s too dangerous. In her community, her right to participate and even lead is uncontested. The adults around her appear to respect her decision-making and value her contributions. As Lindstrom points out, Standing Rock was itself “a youth-led movement. You saw so many children there. It wasn’t just grownups fighting for clean water” (Lindstrom qtd. in Saxon, n.p.).
We Are Water Protectors offers a powerful assertion of Indigenous resilience in the face of adversity. The refrain “We stand / With our songs / And our drums. / We are still here” (5, 19, 31) echoes through the book, along with an illustration of drummers standing in a circle with a floral pattern in the background. Each time the refrain repeats, a drummer is added to the circle, emphasizing that Indigenous people will no longer be silenced or erased.
The girl becomes a member of a collective movement made up of both children and adults. The final spread in the book is the most explicitly political; the girl attends a protest or demonstration with a diverse group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists. The book ends with an uplifting message of hope: “We are stewards of the Earth. Our spirits have not been broken. We are water protectors. WE STAND! The black snake is in for the fight of its life” (33-34). While We Are Water Protectors begins in an Indigenous community, it expands to encompass a global movement for environmental justice. The book’s back matter includes a pledge for children to take up the cause and become an Earth Steward and Water Protector themselves.
Addressing the Root Causes of Injustice
We Are Water Protectors has the potential to empower children to become activists and make positive changes in their communities. However, in order for social justice work to be transformative, Short argues that it must address the root causes of inequality. To unlock the full transformative potential of We Are Water Protectors, parents and educators will likely need to bring in additional resources that address the environmental racism at the heart of the Dakota Access Pipeline project.
As Short explains, children are often asked by adults to participate in charity work, rather than transformative action. She contends, for example, that children should not only volunteer at a soup kitchen but analyze the reasons why poverty exists in their community. Children should be encouraged to critique society and challenge the status quo through actions that address the root causes of inequality. Short writes that “The goal is promoting change and transformative practices” (149).
Short maintains that picturebooks rarely pay enough attention to root causes, and in doing so, perpetuate childism by underestimating children’s capabilities:
“Ironically, while these picturebooks provide many positive portrayals of the rights of children to participate in making decisions and contributing to the world, the authors stop short of recognizing children’s ability to understand why these problems exist. A lack of understanding of the root causes puts children in the position of taking action on the surface, on the most visible sign of the problem, instead of exploring underlying root causes and addressing the real issues. In doing so, authors fall victim to the societal assumptions about children’s rights for participation that they are challenging” (150).
While We Are Water Protectors depicts a child protagonist engaging in activism, it omits the reasons behind the pipeline’s construction. It is clear from the illustrations combined with the book’s backmatter that the “black snake” is really an oil pipeline. However, there is no in-text explanation for how the pipeline came to be. Who is building it? What is it for? Why is it being built, despite the environmental risks? And perhaps most importantly, why must it be built through the narrator’s Indigenous community, risking their water supply?
Today, many consider the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline to be an example of environmental racism. The New Yorker reports that “Originally, the pipeline was supposed to cross the Missouri near Bismarck, but authorities worried that an oil spill there would have wrecked the state capital’s drinking water. So they moved the crossing to half a mile from the reservation, across land that was taken from the tribe in 1958, without their consent” (McKibbem n.p.). The National Resources Defence Council adds that “Critics see this rerouting—or the government’s prioritization of drinking water for the largely white communities of Bismarck over that of an Indigenous reservation—as an act of environmental racism” (Hu n.p.).
Why is it okay to poison some people’s water but not others? This is a question that children will need to contend with if they are to address the root causes of our current environmental crisis. Educators should consider raising the topic of environmental racism in discussions of We Are Water Protectors to support the book’s transformative potential.
Sources
Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations, 1989, https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024.
Hu, Sheila. "The Dakota Access Pipeline: What You Need to Know." NRDC, 12 June 2024, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/dakota-access-pipeline-what-you-need-know#what-is. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024.
Lindstrom, Carole. We Are Water Protectors. Roaring Brook Press, 2020.
McKibben, Bill. "A Pipeline Fight and America's Dark Past." The New Yorker, 6 Sept 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-pipeline-fight-and-americas-dark-past. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024.
Saxon, Antonia. "Q & A with Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade." Publisher's Weekly, 17 March 2020, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/82716-q-a-with-carole-lindstrom-and-michaela-goade.html. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024.
Short, Kathy G. "The Right to Participate: Children as Activists in Picturebooks." Critical Content Analysis of Children's and Young Adult Literature, edited by Holly Johnson et al., Routledge, 2016, pp. 137-54.
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. "Protecting the First Hill: Nurturing Eniigaanzid in Children." Dancing On Our Turtle's Back, Arp Books, pp. 119-39.