Our April Author of the Month: LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON
Wednesday, Apr 02, 2025 at 10:25am
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician, and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of seven books, including the recent non-fiction A Short History of the Blockade, and the acclaimed novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies.
In her new book, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, she takes a revolutionary look at that most elemental force, water, and suggests a powerful path for the future. She'll be appearing live at our store in Winnipeg to discuss her work with Shelagh Rogers on Tuesday April 29 at a special, livestreamed event.
For years, 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.
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Theory of Water
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 
Hardcover
$35.00
Reader Reward Price: $31.50
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 many years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has found refuge in skiing--in all kinds of weather across different forms of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home. Recently, as she skimmed along this path and meditated on our world's uncertainty--including environmental devastation, the rise of authoritarianism, and the effects of ongoing social injustice--her mind turned to the ice beside her, and the snow beneath her feet. And she asked herself: What might it mean to truly listen to water? To know not only the land on which we live, but the water that surrounds and inhabits us? To coexist with and alongside water?
So begins this renowned writer's quest to discover, understand, and trace the historical and cultural interactions of Indigenous peoples with water in all its forms. On her journey, she reflects on the teachings, traditions, stories, and creative work of others in her community--particularly those of her longtime friend Doug Williams, an Elder whose presence suffuses these pages; reads deeply the words of thinkers from other communities whose writing expands her own; and begins to shape a "Theory of Water" that reimagines relationships among all beings and life-forces.
In this essential and inventive work, Simpson artfully weaves Nishnaabeg stories with her own thought and lived experience--and offers a vision of water as a catalyst for transformation, today and into our shared future.
A Short History of the Blockade
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson ,
Trade paperback
$12.99
Reader Reward Price: $11.69
In A Short History of the Blockade, award-winning writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories, storytelling aesthetics, and practices to explore the generative nature of Indigenous blockades through our relative, the beaver--or in Nishnaabemowin, Amik. Moving through genres, shifting through time, amikwag stories become a lens for the life-giving possibilities of dams and the world-building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance as both a negation and an affirmation. Widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation, Simpson's work breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song, bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. A Short History of the Blockade reveals how the practice of telling stories is also a culture of listening, "a thinking through together," and ultimately, like the dam or the blockade, an affirmation of life. Introduction by Jordan Abel.
Noopiming
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Trade paperback
$22.99
Reader Reward Price: $20.69
Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel, one that combines narrative and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics.
Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator's will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed. Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves.
Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for "in the bush," and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie's 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson's work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing - healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed.
As We Have Always Done
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Trade paperback
$26.99
Reader Reward Price: $24.29
Winner: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's Best Subsequent Book 2017
Honorable Mention: Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017
Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands extraction and the pipeline construction at Standing Rock, and demanded justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women. In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking.
Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.
Islands of Decolonial Love
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Trade paperback
$19.00
Reader Reward Price: $17.10
In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation. Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson's characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive the historical and ongoing injustices of racism and colonialism. Told with voices that are rarely recorded but need to be heard, and incorporating the language and history of her people, Leanne Simpson's Islands of Decolonial Love is a profound, important, and beautiful book of fiction.
Rehearsals for Living
- Robyn Maynard , Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Trade paperback
$23.00
Reader Reward Price: $20.70
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.
When the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned artist, musician, and author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, began writing each other letters--a gesture sparked by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. These letters soon grew into a powerful exchange about where we go from here.
Rehearsals for Living is a captivating and visionary work--part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and reiterating the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment, Maynard and Simpson create something new: an urgent demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up other ways of ordering earthly life.
Dancing On Our Turtle's Back
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Trade paperback
$24.95
Reader Reward Price: $22.46
Many promote Reconciliation as a "new" way for Canada to relate to Indigenous Peoples. In Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence activist, editor, and educator Leanne Simpson asserts reconciliation must be grounded in political resurgence and must support the regeneration of Indigenous languages, oral cultures, and traditions of governance.
Simpson explores philosophies and pathways of regeneration, resurgence, and a new emergence through the Nishnaabeg language, Creation Stories, walks with Elders and children, celebrations and protests, and meditations on these experiences. She stresses the importance of illuminating Indigenous intellectual traditions to transform their relationship to the Canadian state.
Challenging and original, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back provides a valuable new perspective on the struggles of Indigenous Peoples.
The Gift Is in the Making
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson , Amanda Strong
Trade paperback
$22.00
Reader Reward Price: $19.80
The Gift Is in the Making retells previously published Anishinaabeg stories, bringing to life Anishinaabeg values and teachings for a new generation. Readers are immersed in a world where all genders are respected, the tiniest being has influence in the world, and unconditional love binds families and communities to each other and to their homeland. Sprinkled with gentle humour and the Anishinaabe language, this collection of stories speaks to children and adults alike, and reminds us of the timelessness of stories that touch the heart.
Also available as an audiobook narrated by Tiffany Ayalik. Find it through your favourite audio retailer!
This Accident of Being Lost
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Trade paperback
$19.99
Reader Reward Price: $17.99
A knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization.
This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. These visionary pieces build upon Simpson's powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love.
A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while texting "ARE THEY GETTING IT?"; lovers visit the last remaining corner of the boreal forest; three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in an upper middle-class neighbourhood; and Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario. Blending elements of Nishnaabeg storytelling, science fiction, contemporary realism, and the lyric voice, This Accident of Being Lost burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew.
