by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Haymarket Books
4/22/2025, paperback
SKU: 9798888903681
A genre-bending exploration of that most elemental force-water-through Indigenous storytelling, personal memory, and the work of influential artists and writers
For many years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson took solace in skiing-in all kinds of weather, on all kinds of snow across all kinds of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home. Recently, as she skied on this path against the backdrop of uncertainty, environmental devastation, rising authoritarianism and ongoing social injustice, her mind turned to the water in the creek and an elemental question: What might it mean to truly listen to water? To know water? To exist with and alongside water?
So began a quest to understand her people's historical, cultural, and ongoing interactions with water in all its forms (ice, snow, rain, perspiration, breath). Pulling together these threads, Leanne began to see how a "Theory of Water" might suggest a radical rethinking of relationships between beings and forces in the world today. In this inventive work, Simpson draws on Nishnaabeg origin stories while artfully weaving the work of influential writers and artists alongside her personal memories and experience-and in doing so, reimagines water as a catalyst for radical transformation, capable of birthing a new world.
Theory of Water is a resonant exploration of an intricate, multi-layered relationship with the most abundant element on our planet-one that, as Simpson eloquently shows, is shaping our present even as it demands a radical rethinking of how we might achieve a just future.
Reviews:
"Leanne Simpson's Theory of Water offers quiet meditations on what it means to believe in water, Nibi. Water has its own time, ontology, and theory and practice of change. If we listen carefully, as Simpson does, it can teach us to be patient. The transformations of water from solid, liquid to gas are sometimes quick, like snow melting in the Spring, and other times, unfold over countless generations like a glacier carving its way across the land. The answers water provides are healing, regenerative, and flowing in ways that breach and dissolve the rigid social hierarchies of colonialism and capitalism. Simpson asks herself and thus the reader, do you believe in water?" -- Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
"Theory of Water builds a case for deep relationality. Rather than a law-like form of kinship, or model and theory of interdependance or an account of transactions apportioning material and social worlds, this is a leaky, boundary defying and rich account of how we come into being through water and sinter; attach to, stay alive with this crucial, transitional and shifting fractal form. Grounded in Anishnabe thought and history Simpson scales up from the fractal to offer us a theory and model also of internationalism, of social and political intercommunalism and permeability occasioned also by water, as mode of transport, as a connector of worlds, regions, life forms. This is a model of Indigenous political thought that refuses all enclosures. Theory of Water enacts an intellectual and political history and diplomacy of the present that calls for shared journeys and shared futures." -- Audra Simpson, author, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States
"'Love is the necessary precursor to world building, ' Leanne Betasamosake Simpson teaches us, before she proceeds to enact that very idea with a fierce generosity in this very book. Theory of Water offers us new ways of relating to that animating spirit that keeps us alive, that binds us together in shared fate. Water is teacher, water is ancestor, water is power, and water is song. Through tender moments of mourning an Elder and unapologetic assertions of rage at colonial injustice, Simpson offers a tremendous gift for those seeking a shared map for reciprocity, accountability, and resilience." -- Eve L. Ewing, author of Original Sins
About the Author:
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. Leanne is the author of seven books, including her 2021 novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, which was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.