Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 253: Theory of Water — with Leanne Simpson
Speakers: Julia Aoki, Am Johal, Leanne Simpson
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Julia Aoki 0:05
Hello listeners! I’m Julia Aoki with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist. Am and Leanne chat about her creative process, the significance of Nishnaabeg thought and practice in her work, and some upcoming projects including her newest book Theory of Water, set to be published in Spring of 2025. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:44
Hello. Welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a special guest with us in the studio here at 312 Main, you can hear the voices inside because we're not quite a, you know, professional recording studio, but it's great to have Leanne Simpson with us. Leanne, welcome.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 1:05
Thank you. Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
Am Johal 1:08
Leanne, I'm wondering if we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 1:15
Sure. My name is Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and I'm Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg. I'm a band member of Alderville First Nation, and I'm a writer and musician and an intellectual, I guess. I guess that's what you would call me.
Am Johal 1:31
Well, Leanne, it's been wonderful to get to know you over the years, you've come and spoken at SFU a number of times. I think the first time was over a decade ago, where our mutual friend Glen [Coulthard] had you come out to speak at SFU. And it's remarkable to me the range of work that you take on, from your own academic theoretical writing, to your own creative work in terms of short stories and novels and other work. And, of course, your music. How do you keep all of those things together? Those are—each of those on their own require a dedication to craft and work. But do you draw a kind of distinction between those works, or this is just something that naturally comes to you in terms of the forms that your, I guess, your creative resistance takes?
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 2:27
It comes really naturally to me. So I think that I'm just doing what I'm doing. A lot of, a lot of what I do, I think brings me a lot of joy and is very, very meaningful to me. I have trouble being engaged in projects and institutions and organizations that aren't meaningful to me. So I think that's sort of one of the drivers. I think that at least initially, I was really, really interested in, sort of, falling into Nishnaabeg thought and embodying that, and seeing where that kind of creative energy and creative sovereignty took me. And it doesn't fit into the genres and the disciplines in the same way that I think Western practices do. So I think that that's another sort of element of it, is that none of what I do particularly fits into the categories and the boxes that are available. So I find a lot of creative energy in those interstitial spaces.
Am Johal 3:32
Which is, you know, I lived in the Middle East for a year and met with many Palestinian organizations. Not unlike many people that I met there, that somebody was a poet, a writer, a journalist and doing human rights work on the side. It was very much a coherent set of practices. I'll start with asking, you've done a lot of projects in the last number of years, but maybe I'll start with some of your work, What We Have Always Done, where that project came from?
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 4:04
I think at the time, I was interested in, sort of, Indigenous resurgence, and what happens when you refuse the politics of recognition, and you turn within, inside indigenous thought. And so for me, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg thought and practice. What are, what kind of theory does one embody? What are the practices? What are the ethics? What is the political economy? What are the alternatives to racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy and colonialism? And so that book, I think, was a sort of refusal, and then a generative sort of space where I was thinking through, or trying to think through those things from within Nishnaabeg thought and practice. And I think at the time now, when I look back, even on Dancing On Our Turtle's Back, and As We Have Always Done, there's sort of an insular quality to it, where I'm not just sort of refusing the state, but I'm sort of falling into Nishnaabeg thought and indigeneity in a way that isn't necessarily connected to other anti-colonial practices and movements and struggles.
And I think what I learned from writing Dancing On Our Turtle's Back, and sort of living in a particular way in order to generate that book, and then again, going through that sort of same practice of being in the bush a lot and working with elders and working with language a lot, and ceremony, and coming up with As We Have Always Done, and then moving to Rehearsals For Living, is that at some point, it sort of dawned on me that Nishnaabeg worlds are very deep networks with deep reciprocity and relationality, kind of spanning a certain time and space that's inclusive of the future and of the past, that's very focused on the present. And I started to think about how Nishnaabeg worlds and the worlds that I was interested in building were linking up to other anti colonial struggles.
So I started to not be so insular, and started to think about how these worlds and my practice were connected to these other struggles and these other people that I was sharing the planet with, that I was sharing time and space with. And so that is sort of, I think, still where I am. It's, it's something that I guess when I look back, of course, of course, Nishnaabeg knowledge is very intimate and local and international, and concerned with these kind of planetary crises that we're facing.
Am Johal 6:54
Last year, I had a chance to see you at the Indian Summer Festival, and earlier in the year, Robyn Maynard came to do a talk at SFU on the book that you worked on together. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to how that collaboration started and what that was like for you to work together.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 7:15
So I think for me, this, this kind of waking up and realizing that I wanted to start to link up to the other communities and peoples that I was sharing time and space with, sort of gave me a little bit of a... I was starting to be attentive to what the Black community was doing in Toronto in a way that I hadn't in the past—or hadn't been as attentive in the past. And so when I was doing the book launch, as we have always done, and I was in Montreal, I wanted to be in conversation with Robyn, who had just come out with Policing Black Lives. And so we did a book launch together in Montreal, and had this fantastic conversation, and started thinking more about solidarity, more about our own kind of relationality in the communities and struggles that we were involved in. We spent some time in the north, in the Yellowknives Dene territory at a solidarity gathering, and we started to sort of have all these plans about how we were going to deepen our own relationship to each other, in a political sort of sense, but also in a friendship sort of sense.
And then the pandemic happened. And a lot of our plans for visiting with Freedom Schools and coming to the sugar bush and, you know, walking the streets of Toronto in a way that reveals Michi Saagiig history, Haudenosaunee history, and also Black history, I think, didn't get to happen. And so we started to write letters to each other through the pandemic, through the global Black uprising, in the summer of 2021—not intending to write a book, just as a way of educating ourselves and thinking alongside each other, that sort of Black feminist practice of thinking alongside, rather than that kind of academic debating. That sort, kind of debating. And so eventually, Robyn went for a walk with Dionne Brand, and Dionne asked, sort of, what she was up to, and she talked about this letter writing project, and Dionne wanted to see it. And then it sort of became a book after that.
Am Johal 9:26
Great, great.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 9:27
Yeah.
Am Johal 9:28
I had a chance to speak with you earlier, on an earlier podcast on your album, Theory of Ice, that came out a couple of years ago. And at the time, you had mentioned also recording Willie Dunn's I Pity The Country. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to those projects and kind of what you're working on in regards to music.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 9:52
Yeah, so the last full length record that I released is Theory of Ice, and we did a cover of Willie Dunn's I Pity the Country. And Willie Dunn was a Mi'kmaq singer songwriter. Was active in the late 1960s and 1970s, he was also part of the Red Power movement. He was an activist. And I was invited to perform at a Native North American gathering in Ottawa. And I was... we were doing a three song set. We were sort of the young, young people on the bill, (laughs) which I loved. And it was at the National Arts Center, and I wanted to do a cover of Willie, because he couldn't be there, right? Because he was, he's no longer with us. And I knew his family was going to be there, and I knew his, kind of, crew was going to be there. So I was listening to his old songs, and I Pity the Country just spoke to me. I felt like I could step up to the mic and say every one of the words. There's like a couple of real kind of '60s lines. But for the most part, the politics haven't changed and the sentiment hasn't changed. I changed the one line "they pull and they paw me," I changed it to "they rape and they beat me" as a way of gesturing towards the work that we've done as a community around Missing and Murdered Indigenous women.
So that night, right before my band goes on stage, the Colten Boushie verdict comes down. And Rosanna Deerchild was the host, and she broke the news to the audience that the man had been acquitted. And so it was this moment where people, I think, felt this tremendous sense of injustice, and then I was the next person to sort of step up to the mic. And that was the song that we were doing, is I Pity the Country. And so... that was the first time that we performed it. And I think I realized, I saw, sort of, Willie Thrasher and Linda Saddleback, and Willy Mitchell were in the front row. Willie Dunn's family was there. I saw the power of that song in that present moment. And we recorded it, sort of, as a demo right after that, because we wanted to sort of capture that—the energy in the room that night. And then every time we've performed it, there's been something that has happened in terms of colonialism. Where that song is a way of speaking back to whatever, whatever struggle is happening in the moment. And so it's become something that's really special to perform.
Am Johal 12:33
You were interviewed recently in the local paper, The Source, around Theory of Water, wondering if you can speak about that.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 12:43
I should mention, though, with I Pity the Country, that Lisa Jackson and Connor McNally and I just did a video.
Am Johal 12:52
Oh.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 12:53
That we released on Truth and Reconciliation Day for the video. And it's a... Willie Dunn was also a filmmaker.
Am Johal 13:01
Yeah, and did great NFB documentaries as well as others. Yeah.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 13:06
Right. So the idea was to make an archival short film based on all of that footage from the Indian film crew and through the history of the NFB with Indigenous filmmakers. And so it's sort of a... it's a really beautiful protest, sort of, film where you can see Frank T'Seleie and the Berger inquiry. You can see Haida Gwaii. You can see, sort of the this history of resistance and protest and so, yeah, people should check that out on YouTube.
Am Johal 13:36
Yeah, it's Ballad of Crowfoot. And then did another one on the HBC.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 13:42
Yeah, which is what's recognized as, sort of, the first music video in Canada, which is pretty, pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.
So Theory of Water is a new book that I'm working on that's coming out in the spring of 2025 and it's just picking up on this idea of sort of Nishnaabeg internationalism and how we make worlds, how we relate to other anti-colonial peoples making worlds, solidarity. Where do we look for theory, and inspiration, and generative kind of thinking in terms of land based practices. And water is one that really spoke to me—the global water cycle, the water that is inside of me, that's outside of me. That kind of has a permeability to it, that changes form from a gas to a solid to a liquid, and that connects all different forms of life on the planet. So I spend a lot of time thinking about water, and thinking about what it means in terms of organizing and making worlds. And so I'm just sort of in the editing process for that. And it's really wonderful to be in Vancouver, because I feel like this community has been really, really supportive of my work over the last 10 years, and so it's a good time for me to work out any, any of the bugs in the manuscript. There's something about when you say it out loud into a mic where you're like, "Oh, that sentence needs a little more shine." (laughs)
Am Johal 15:25
Yeah, besides your writing, are there other projects and collaborations you're currently working on?
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 15:34
I'm working on a novel called The Breathing Lands, which is a novel in seven short stories, and I'm working on a new record as well. We've got maybe six or seven demos. And it's a bit of—the record's a little bit of a departure in terms of process. So I've been... the music is coming first, and then I'm writing lyrics to the music, and I'm writing the vocal lines as well. So that project is, is really... I'm really enjoying it. It's been... I think the pandemic has been really difficult for musicians, and for bands in particular, and so it's always a struggle. But it's, it's something that's bringing me a lot of joy.
Am Johal 16:20
Now, because a number of people who will be listening to this podcast since we're based out of an art school at SFU. There's always a lot of questions around collaboration and creative process and those types of things in each of the areas that you work. From writing theory, to creative projects, to music. What are some of the things you've learned or developed as an artist from the way that you started to make work, say, when you were a teenager, early 20s, to now, how has your own creative process evolved?
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 16:57
I think I've learned to protect the part of me that can create. And so that is, that is very, very important. So that's things like boundaries and saying no and taking care and paying attention to, sort of, your mind and your heart and making sure that those are in good places. I think that writing is like, it's a muscle and it can be a struggle, but it's, it's something that is learned and practiced and a skill. And so I think... There's a work ethic, I think that goes into writing, for writers. Like rarely doe, does the, sort of, book or the song, sort of, come from a divine place and just flow through me, out onto the page. It's often a struggle to get that shitty first draft. And then, I think in my early days, I would do one or two drafts or three drafts. And now I do 20 drafts, or like, the editing process has become much more labour intensive, I guess. Yeah.
Am Johal 18:10
You'd mentioned, Leanne, that you had a chance to go to the Palestine Literature Festival and chance to travel through and meet with other artists and writers. Wondering if you can speak a little bit about that.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 18:24
Sure, I was one of the International writers at the Palestine Festival of Literature in May of this year. And so I traveled. It's a traveling festival, so it's a really beautiful part of it, that there's a group of sort of international writers that that meets in Amman, Jordan, and then we crossed through the Allenby Bridge and drove into Ramallah, and then sort of traveled around the West Bank and 48, doing different events with Palestinian writers from the diaspora and from, from inside Palestine. And then also doing—meeting with freedom fighters and community activists and artists and different projects during the day. So there was sort of a political education component of the project as well. I had a very visceral reaction to being there, which I was surprised, because it's a very different climate, it's a very different landscape, it's a very different culture. But I felt very at home, very well taken care of, very loved, and sort of a kinship with Palestinians facing all kinds of violence from settler colonialism that was so similar to, I think, what Indigenous peoples in North America have faced over the past 400 years. But interestingly enough, you can see sort of all of the stages of settler colonialism happening at the same time with a state that has military power that is not from the 1800s. So it was something that was... I felt like I learned—I thought that I was going to learn a lot about the Palestinian struggle, and I did. But I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about what it means to be Indigenous and struggle against colonialism, and so I felt like I really deepened my relationship to a lot of different Palestinian artists and writers and people I was there.
Am Johal 20:38
I want to ask you, Leanne, about—you've had a long standing connection with alternative education projects, sort of outside the academy, although you have a PhD and you are comfortable in that world as well. But I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit too, I know you're involved with Dechinta, but probably many other educational experiments and projects that are outside of the usual frame of academic teaching context.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 21:08
Yeah, well, I mean, I thought a lot about how education works within within Nishnaabeg society, and how learning was lifelong, how people were encouraged to follow their own interests and what they were good at, and foster this sense of self determination with inside a set of ethical responsibilities and commitments to the community, and to the land. And I thought a lot about how there was people of all ages and abilities, sort of, interacting, getting up in the morning, figuring out how to make a world, making that world together as a way of life, as a way of generating life, as a way of generating knowledge and sharing that knowledge, and how those kinds of formations were full of full of care. And so that seemed to me like a really wonderful way of making a world and living in a world. And so I think initially I tried to do that in the classroom at university, and I think there's lots of ways that you can support students and support sort of learning communities, and there's lots of barriers to doing that at the university as well in terms of grading and marks and syllabi and and the structure. And so I think that I've always kind of pushed back against those kinds of systems, and I've spent a lot of time with myself and with my own kids, who have been homeschooled for their whole schooling experience until now. One of them is in university, but just thinking really broadly about what it means to engage in meaningful ways of learning that are community centered, that are care centered, and are also sort of pushing at an intellectual—or challenging intellectually.
Am Johal 23:07
Leanne, is there anything you'd like to add?
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 23:10
I don't think that I do have anything to add, but it's been a really lovely conversation.
Am Johal 23:14
Yeah, wonderful to chat with you again, Leanne, and look forward to your talk this evening.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 23:20
Thanks so much for having me.
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Julia Aoki 23:25
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Head to the show notes to learn more about Leanne’s work. You can also find a link to our 2021 episode with Leanne, Theory of Ice, in the resources section.
If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement.
Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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