What is the significance of that gesture? With all her people gathered behind her, she holds the feather up in a gesture also seen in pictures of other Native activists. And a warrior is never a bad thing! I see a warrior as a protector. The youth organized a run from Standing Rock to Washington, D.C., to bring awareness to the situation. It wasn’t just grownups fighting for clean water.

Lindstrom: The camp at Standing Rock was a youth-led movement. Can you talk about what was behind the decision to make her a child? The girl who stars in the story, the leader, the warrior-maybe that’s not the right word-she is very young. It’s very important to let the illustrator have room to let their imaginations go, so having words that are slightly lyrical was the perfect way to write the story. I like the reader’s imagination to conjure the details. So I waited, and then a couple of days later, I sat down and wrote it just the way it is now. I’m not sure I can.” And she said, “Well, give it a couple of days.” She knows what works best for me. When I showed it to my agent, she said, “Could you think about maybe making it more lyrical?” And I said, “I don’t know if I can do that. It started as a novel, but it needed to be told quickly, faster. I had written a picture book before, in 2013, and I thought, okay, well maybe I could contribute that way. I really wanted to be there, but I had family issues. My tribe is also in North Dakota, north of Standing Rock. When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people's water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource.Lindstrom: I heard about the camp at Standing Rock in the summer of 2016.

When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people's water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource. Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption - a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade. Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing

The water protectors book