Feminist to Know: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Indigenous writer, academic, activist, and musician. She is an off-reserve member of Alderville First Nation living in Peterborough, Ontario, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in Denendeh.

Betasamosake Simpson’s writing incorporates Indigenous storytelling and epistemologies, and spans genres from sci-fi to narrative nonfiction. Much of her award-winning work, whether academic or artistic, involves incorporating Indigenous belief systems and practices. Her book Theory of Ice was named to the Polaris Prize shortlist and she is the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award.

Her activism focuses on opposing extractive capitalism and taking decolonial action that centers Indigenous sovereignty and methods of worldbuilding. Betasamosake Simpson critiques, for example, state sanction as a method of reconciliation politics, instead advocating for dismantling settler oppression and the colonialist state. 

Overall, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a leader in forefronting Indigenous creativity as the path forward to freedom, combining storytelling, art-making, activism, and academics in all of her work.