Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, artist, and musician 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—revealing a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. Her new album Theory of Ice will be released by You’ve Changed Records in March 2021.
Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.
Leanne is the author of This Accident of Being Lost (House of Anansi, 2017), which won the MacEwan University Book of the Year; was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award; was long listed for CBC Canada Reads; and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Quill & Quire; As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) which was awarded Best Subsequent Book by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association; Islands of Decolonial Love (ARP Books, 2013); and Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (2011). Her most recent novel, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies was published by House of Anansi Press in the fall of 2020.
Leanne has previously released the albums Noopiming Sessions (2020), f(l)ight (2016), and Islands of Decolonial Love (2013).
