as part of Studio Encounters on Water #2 / part of Climate Imaginaries Festival program
In this talk Leanne Betasamosake Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabe consciousness to dismantle the present moment. After three years of pandemic, amplified fascism, freedom convoys, extinct glaciers, police killings, children alone in cages at borders, the resurgence of fascist states, open air prisons for entire peoples, and a dying planet, she is asking herself, what does it mean to, as Rebecca Belmore asks us in her installation Wave Sound, to listen to water? What does it mean, as Dionne Brand writes through her diaspora consciousness and by inventorying the quotidian disasters of our time, in her epic poem Nomenclature, “to believe in water”?
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, musician, academic and activist 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. She is a status member of Alderville First Nation in Ontario, Canada. Leanne is the author of eight previous books, including As We Have Always Done (2017) and Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back. Her novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, which was short-listed for the Dublin Literary Prize and the Governor General’s prize for fiction. Her latest project in collaboration with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living was short-listed for the Governor Generals prize for non-fiction and is a national best seller. Leanne’s album Theory of Ice was short- listed for the Polaris Prize and she was the recipient of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn award for innovation in video production. Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities nationally and internationally and has twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba.
