Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead

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Join us for a lecture with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson—writer, academic, musician, and JHI’s 2025–26 Distinguished Visiting Fellow.

Abstract: Thinking alongside lakes, snow and ice, this lecture uses story to create a decolonial space for us to come together and imagine futures beyond our present moment. Theory of water draws on the natural world as a map, a theorist and a teacher and draws the audience into a communal space of dreaming and remembering to refuse our colonial present and collaborate to reworld with systems of care. 

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. 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. Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe and has over twenty years’ experience with Indigenous land-based education. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba and is a member of Alderville First Nation. Leanne is the author of eight previous books, including A Short History of the Blockade and the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies  which was  short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. Her newest work, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps for the Times Ahead was released in April 2025.  Leanne is also a musician.  Her latest release Theory of Ice was named to the Polaris Prize short list, and she is the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award.

Accessibility notice: Elevators are unavailable due to construction but seating is available on the ground floor.