Greetings from The Paley Center for Media’s Education Department!
Welcome to the latest installment of “What We’re Watching.” Twice a month the education department reaches out to the community with tips and ideas for consuming media with kids by highlighting different themes that connect to two selected programs, one for younger viewers and one for older viewers, each with related activities and resources.
Watching media alongside your kids is a perfect jumping-off point to making media literacy a part of your everyday lives. Familiarizing yourself with the basics is a great first step. You can view our first newsletter about media literacy best practices archived here. We also recommend the National Association for Media Literacy Education’s Parents Guide—it’s a terrific introduction!
What We're Watching: Water Protectors
Earth Day is a great reminder to do more to help protect the planet. From unpredictable rainfall patterns to shrinking ice sheets, rising sea levels, floods, and droughts—most impacts of climate change come down to water, which we cannot live without. And central to the environmentalism movement are Native Americans, the people who have been most impacted by the destruction of their ancestral lands through colonization and industrialization. Indigenous practices, cultures, and religions are intrinsically linked to the natural world, and nothing is more important in the world than access to clean water. Our recommendations this week focus on stories about Native American communities in different parts of the country fighting for clean water.
This Week's Recommendations for Younger Viewers
Spirit Rangers: “Water Protectors” S2 E10 (2023)
Recommended for Grades PK+
Available on Netflix
Inspired by stories from Native American tribes and the majestic landscapes of our national parks, Spirit Rangers explores the adventure and beauty of nature through the eyes of Kodi, Summer, and Eddy Skycedar, Chumash/Cowlitz siblings who share a secret. This trio of kids are “Spirit Rangers" who help protect the land and spirits of the national park that they call home in California. Created by Santa Ynez Chumash tribal member and the first California Native American showrunner Karissa Valencia, this series celebrates community, nature, and the rich heritage of Native American storytelling. In this episode, the Spirit Rangers face an epic fight to protect the park and the nearby ocean when the Trickster Trio unleashes a stream of toxic goo from an oil pipe.
Viewing Questions
- What play are the Spirit Rangers performing in at the beginning of the episode?
- What is Otter Woman responsible for doing, according to the story?
- What do the Spirit Rangers discover is causing oil leaks all over the park?
- What happens to the trio when they enter the spirit world this time?
- How do they help stop the goo from spreading despite not being able to transform? Who helps them?
- When they finally get to the ocean, what machine do they find out is making goo and contaminating the ocean?
- How do they reconstruct their T’aya necklaces? Who helps them? What new powers do they get as a result?
- How do they stop the goo gadget, save the ocean, and seal off the oil leak?
Additional Resources
Read
All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon
Chumash Stories by Alan Salzar
Water: Protecting the Precious Resource All Around Us by Olga Fadeeva
We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom
When the Animals Were People: Stories Told by the Chumash People of California by Kay Sanger and Tom Sanger
Watch
Maq and the Spirit of the Woods (2006)
The Mountain of SGaana (2017)
Molly of Denali (2019–)
