In the prophecy, this second path is strewn with black snakes - a symbolic image ominously reflected in the actuality of the oil pipelines that cross-hatch Native lands with their grim message of turning nature from a source of life-wide vitality and reverence to a resource for human need and greed. In her tradition, there is a prophecy that paints two possible roads from the present to the future: One is the natural path, embracing the sacred relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world long before biologists and ecologists discovered that “we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human” the other is a path of unnatural acceleration, propelled by greed and mindless technological frenzy.
In the author’s afterword, Lindstrom explains that in Ojibwe culture, women are considered the protectors of the water and men of the fire. Inspired by the landmark locus of courage and resistance at Standing Rock - the 2016 movement that magnetized people from more than five hundred indigenous nations and thousands of allies to take a stance against the Dakota Access Pipeline, against its concrete assault on a particular piece of land and against its general symbolism as ominous emblem of extractionism - the book invites young people to cast themselves as agents of change and stewards of the natural world.
We ourselves are a story of water - biologically and culturally, in our most elemental materiality and our mightiest metaphors.įrom author Carole Lindstrom, member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, and artist Michaela Goade, member of the Central Council of the Tlingit a Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, comes We Are Water Protectors ( public library) - a lyrical illustrated celebration of cultural heritage and the courage to stand up for nature. “Every story is a story of water,” Native American poet Natalie Diaz wrote in her stunning ode to her heritage, the language of the Earth, and the erasures of history.
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