Acclaimed Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson takes a revolutionary look at that most elemental force, water, and suggests a powerful path for the future.

For years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson took solace in skiing—in all kinds of weather across all forms of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home. Recently, as she skied this path and meditated on our world’s uncertainty, environmental devastation, rising authoritarianism and ongoing social injustice, her mind turned to the water in the creek, the ice beneath her feet, and an elemental question: What might it mean to truly listen to water? To know water? To exist with and alongside water? So began her quest to discover, understand and trace the historical and cultural interactions of Indigenous peoples with water in all its forms. Soon she began to see how a "Theory of Water" might lead to a radical rethinking of relationships between beings and forces in the world today.
In this inventive work, Simpson artfully weaves Nishnaabeg story and tradition with her own deep thinking and lived experience—and offers a vision of water as a catalyst for radical transformation, capable of birthing a new world.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's profile page

LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years experience with Indigenous land-based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in Denendeh.
Leanne is the author of eight books, including A Short History of the Blockade and the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. This Accident of Being Lost was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award. Her latest project, a collaboration with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living, is a national bestseller and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction.