Picture Book: We Are Water Protectors

We Are Water Protectors, written by Carole Lindstom and illustrated by Michala Goede. Roaring Brook Press, March 2020. 40 pages, $17.99, 978-1250203557.

    We Are Water Protectors starts with a girl recounting a prophecy her grandmother told her. This prophecy tells the importance of the water and living things and the dangers of the black snake. However, the black snake is here, poisoning everything. However, the girl does not give up, calling others to protect nature against the snake. She asks others to “TAKE COURAGE! / I must keep the black snake away/ From my village’s water. I must rally my people together.”

    The text is a song with rhyme and repetition. Each page follows a pattern with repeated words or rhymes to mimic the rise and fall of tones. It occasionally stops on the italicized text, “We stand/ With our Songs/ And our drums./ We are still here,” which is a refrain. The repetition and italicization separate this from the rest of the narrative and represent the voices of the indigenous community who still exist. They work together to stop the black snake and protect the water. 

    Goede brings the text to life through color, composition, and patterns. The nature scenes are full of brilliant cool blues, turquoise, magenta, greens, and purple. The watercolor technique gives a flowing effect to the water, the cosmic space, and the landscape. These gorgeous scenes contrast harshly with the snake, an anthropomorphized representation of the oil pipelines. The black snake is on a harsh black or red backdrop. The text complements nicely with the images of this pipeline snake. For example, the lines, “Spoil the water. Poison plants and animals. Wreck everything in its path,” pairs well with the illustrations of half-bleached, half-skeleton birds and fishes, laying dead from the black sludge of oil spilling onto the blue waters. The text, “Now the black snake is here./ Its venom burns the land. Courses through the water. Making it unfit to drink," shows the pipeline snake with its mouth open, ready to consume and burn anything in its path. 

    Other than the contrasting color palette between nature and the snake, Goede uses composition and color to guide the reader from one page to another. The blues and green-curved shapes act as a river flowing across the pages, connecting the story and the characters. Even the linear, rectangular depiction of the snake, which travels diagonally, horizontally, and vertically, guides the viewer to turn the page. Other colors, like greens and reds, always bleed to the next page.

    Goede also adds to the narrative by utilizing patterns to depict the various tribes across Native American society. She uses the Anishinaabe/Obibwe clan symbols in the animals, floral motifs in nature, and indigenous tribe clothing on the characters. These clothing are on the images with the refrain and the end of the story, where various tribes and their allies fight against the pipeline. We Are Water Protectors is a call for action, activism, and to be one with nature. The author repeats the call at back matter, which contains a pledge children can take to protect the Earth.