This week on the Chat, we’re in conversation with acclaimed writer and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of the superb new work This Accident of Being Lost. Genre-bending, fiercely political, and deeply personal, the pieces that make up this collection resist and defy entrenched colonial narratives and speak back to power in direct, intimate ways. 

Writing in The Winnipeg Review, writer Gwen Benaway says “What fascinates me about Simpson’s work is not its Anishinaabe cultural roots, but its examination of intimacy and love. You can’t separate being Indigenous from how we love others. It’s an extension of culture and worldview .... [t]his notion of reclaiming love and intimacy as a space for resistance and revitalization sits at the heart of Simpson’s new work.”

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, scholar, musician, and is a member of Alderville First Nation. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and has lectured at universities across Canada. She is the author of three previous books, including Islands of Decolonial Love, and the editor of three anthologies. She has released two albums, including f(l)ight, which is a companion piece to this collection.

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THE CHAT WITH LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON

Trevor Corkum: Congrats on the publication of This Accident of Being Lost. Who and what inspires you, as an artist and human being?

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: MIigwech. Inspiration is an internal process for me, a way of living and creating. I think the trick is to generate a cycling of energy within oneself to continually thrive, to continually generate new ideas. That’s certainly more difficult for Indigenous peoples as we cope with the on-going violence and trauma of occupied bodies and land, but that’s what sustains me.

TC: Your writing is fierce and in-your-face, but also deeply confessional and tender. One of my favourite pieces is “Pretending Fearless.” What was your greatest fear as you wrote? 

LBS: I write from a pretty fearless place. I work with an Elder, Ethel Lamothe in Denendeh and she often talks about how fear is the colonizer working through our minds and our hearts. Fear prevents us from living who we are supposed to be as Indigenous peoples. In my creative process and my life, I actively combat fear to make space for creative sovereignty.

TC: The work is wide-ranging, gathering together stories, poems, songs, and other narratives. As you approached the writing, did you have a particular vision for the collection as a whole, or did it come together organically?

LBS: Everything in my work is a deliberate intervention. I had a conceptual vision for the project. I’m drawn to layering meaning into my work and I’m unconcerned with genre. I like constructing new worlds, and then living in them with the characters.

TC: You’re a multi-talented artist, scholar and activist, working across genres. You’re also a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University. In what ways do your various activities and creative outlets intersect and inform each other?

LBS: All of my work comes from the same practice and an intense love of Nishnaabeg land, people, thought and worlds. The current world—so desecrated from the damage of capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy—is not the world my ancestors intended for me, nor is it the world I want to leave my descendants. I’m unconcerned with credentials, awards and careerism, and more concerned about whether my ancestors would recognize me as Nishnaabe. I’m more concerned with building a Nishnaabe world from my descendants.

TC: You have a new academic work coming out this fall. Can you tell us more about the book and the work behind it? What are your thoughts on the relationship between the academy and activism in influencing change? 

LBS: As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance is a new book coming out this fall from the University of Minnesota Press.  Although it will resonate in the academic and activist worlds, I think it is also a book that anyone concerned with Indigenous presence will find interesting. I think the way to change things, is to change things – build new worlds, embody Indigenous brilliance, and animate the systems and networks that inherently bring forth Indigenous nationhood, sovereignty, self determination and the very best of our political practices.

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Excerpt from This Accident of Being Lost

these two

two clandestine eagles find you in the front of this lineup, signing things & pretending nice, wearing professionalism like it’s a halloween costume. the leading one drops in from behind you & the tip of her wing grazes the small of your back in an oval that’s method & rhythm like it’s all you’ll ever have & she is not going to waste one fucking second of it. then the second one comes in on a sharper angle & tight circles your form starting at your roots, rising & then falling. her feathers are the wind on the hairs of your skin & she’s flying conical spirals up past your head & then down again brushing your heels, the backs of your knees, the cracks on your lips, all the while the first one’s wing is whispering to the skin of your lower back, while her beak is sucking the burning panic from the place you keep it hidden, behind the sorrow in your breast’s bone.

This excerpt is taken from This Accident of Being Lost, copyright © 2017 by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Reproduced with permission from House of Anansi Press, Toronto.