Lit Thursday Prompt | November 13, 2025

Cover image credit: Flickr user Mobilus In Mobili, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License. Originally sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Written and illustrated by Indigenous makers, We Are Water Protectors is a children’s book inspired by young activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline from Standing Rock Reservation.

The book follows a young Ojibwe girl’s quest to quest to rally her people and protect the sacred water supply from the “black snake” threatening to poison it. The book also includes ancestral wisdom of the Ojibwe, in the form of teachings from the protagonist’s grandmother.

Prompt: Carole Lindstrom wrote the book because she was unable to attend the Standing Rock protests herself. How might you use your creative gifts in service of human rights today? Even better, how can you do so in a way that everyone, even children, can understand your message?