WaterThreads: Woven Together: Water, Community, Well-Being: READ/WATCH

ADULTS: AS LONG AS GRASS GROWS

YA/YOUTH: [WATCH] HERE'S HOW A YOUNNG FIRST NATIONS CLEAN WATER ACTIVIST IS CAPTIVATING GLOBAL AUDIENCES

CHILDREN: YOUNG WATER PROTECTORS... A STORY ABOUT STANDING ROCK

CHILDREN: WE ARE WATER PROTECTORS

Explore the deep, spiritual relationship between Indigenous women (specifically Anishinaabe) and water.

• Wonder: What does the title 'Water Protector' mean? Where does this title come from? Who can use this title authentically?
• Wonder: How does the identity of 'Water Protector' shape the life of some Anishinnaabe women+?
• Compare creation stories and commissioning/stewardship stories of Genesis 1, 2, & 3.
• Wonder: How does God's call to be stewards of all creation shape our lives?

      OR                

ADULTS: TO BE A WATER PROTECTOR: THE RISE OF THE WIINDIGOO SLAYERS

YA/YOUTH: WATER PROTECTORS: THE HELP CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE PENOKEES

YA/YOUTH: [WATCH] TO WISCONSIN WITH LOVE

OLDER CHILDREN: NIBI EMOSAAWDANG: THE WATER WALKER

YOUNGER CHILDREN: NIBI IS WATER: NIBI AAWON NBIISH

Learning Objectives: Discover current endeavors to combat corporate, colonizer, racist water degredation and exploitation.

• Wonder: What is a Wiindigoo? Where do they live?
• Wonder: How might I/we learn what efforts are already under way to protect the water where I/we live?
• Generate a renewable list of the ways Indigenous peoples have been - and are - protecting water in Minnesota/the region.
• Wonder: What action or engagement is God calling from me and from us as a community as we grow in awareness of water's power, interconnectedness, and vulnerability?

• The Women of Standing Rock Are Building Sovereign Economies by TRACY L. BARNETT
• How the Women of Standing Rock Inspired the World by BREANNA DRAXLER
• Reviving Ancient Water Practices - Yes! Magazine
• Who Are the Water Protectors? Wonderopolis Wonder of the Day #2828

• VIDEO: THE WATER WALKER featuring 18-year old Autumn Peltier, Canadian clean water activist from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation in Ontario (may only be available through July 31, 2023)
• To Wisconsin with Love: Eastern Mennonite University documentary students' spring 2014 project "To Wisconsin with Love" about Wisconsin Penokee Hills Ojibwe/ally mine resistance and envisioning and West Virginia water contamination.
• New Map Restores Native Names to Northern Minnesota - MPR

Natural Resource Defense Council shares Five Indigenous Poets Explore Loss and Love of their Native Lands by Courtney Lindwall; Writer/Reporter - November 1, 2021

From saguaros to sacred waters, the writers weave their personal relationships to the environment with the ancestral.

Credit: 

Districts, 2021 by Wade Patton (Oglala Lakota). Micron ink, prismacolor, graphite on an original ledger page from 1898. “The dragonflies not only represent the nine districts in Oglala Lakota County of South Dakota, but represent happiness and purity in my heritage,” says Patton.

Indigenous poets read urgent climate message on a melting glacier

Watch this stark but beautiful film set on an ice sheet.