'Theory of Water' a study of coxistence and resilience

Much like its subject, the idea for Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s latest book came from humble origins: the creek near her home where she enjoyed cross-country skiing. 

“The creek is a fairly small creek that I think is a fixture in the book, but also a fixture in my life because it’s the body of water that I think I spend the most time with every day,” she says. 

One day, while out on the ski trail, a thought occurred to Betasamosake Simpson: what would it mean if we actually listened to water's wisdom and regenerative potential? This question set Betasamosake Simpson on a journey to explore the historical and cultural interactions with water that Indigenous people have understood for millennia, and they are contained in the new book Theory of Water, which the author will discuss at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg. 

“I start by thinking about my own relationship with water,” Betasamosake Simpson says when asked about where to start with such a vast topic, “how it’s inside my body, how it’s outside my body, how it connects me to every living thing on the planet, how we’re born in our first environment as humans is water. And so, I start to think through what I can learn by listening and observing the global water cycle and the relationships that we all have [with] water in our daily life that are many and numerous, but we don’t often think about them.” 

Water – or nibi, in Anishinaabemowin – has always been something very present in Betasamosake Simpson’s life and consciousness. She grew up learning about how the Great Lakes near her home function as the organs of the land and how water moves from the sky world to the land, bonding together as it falls as snow. Through the process of writing Theory of Water, she learned more about the ways in which different genders interact with water on a cultural level, as well as the cost of not having access to water. 

“In some places in Canada, you turn on the water in your tap and you can easily take a drink. Clean water is readily available to a lot of us,” she explains. “And that’s not true for a lot of First Nations people, and it’s not true for people around the world, particularly under genocidal regimes right now. So, I think that kind of contrast from being sacred and being a teacher and having this beautiful theoretical embodied practice that I was so drawn to as an intellectual with our kind of daily relationship with it is something that was a generative spot for me.” 

Theory of Water marks the latest chapter in Betasamosake Simpson’s elemental exploration. Her album Theory of Ice, which utilized sounds from a lake in the Northwest Territories as the ice broke up, was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize back in 2021, and took a more artistic look at the way water impacts our lives. 

“I think the artistic lens captures... the emotional connection that we have to water,” says Betasamosake Simpson. “Our bodies have this physical connection to water and cycling of water that happens unconsciously for us every day. And then, I think the intellectual practice was really looking at how water is a connector, how we’re interdependent on water, how water connects me to every other person on the planet, every other living thing on the planet and how it matters, how we live inside the ecosystems on the planet.” 

“It’s sort of speaking to the present moment,” she continues, “in terms of how do we live with the planet in a way that’s different than the way we’re living with the planet now.” 

Betasamosake Simpson will be speaking about Theory of Water with acclaimed broadcaster Shelagh Rogers at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location at 7 p.m. on April 29. For more information, patrons can visit McNally Robinson’s website.