Theory of Water by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Canadian | CBC Books | Posted: March 5, 2025 7:06 PM | Last Updated: March 5
Reimagining relationships with water through Indigenous worldview
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.
(From Knopf Canada)
Theory of Water is available in April 2025.
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Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, activist, musician, artist, author and member of Alderville First Nation. Her books include Islands of Decolonial Love, This Accident of Being Lost, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back and As We Have Always Done. Simpson was chosen by Thomas King for the 2014 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. This Accident of Being Lost was shortlisted for the Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize in 2017 and the the 2018 Trillium Book Award.
Her novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. Her most recent book, a collaboration with Robyn Maynard titled Rehearsals for Living, was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction.