All Thinkers

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer, scholar, musician, and activist. She is one of the most important contemporary indigenous thinkers in North America. She works on what is sometimes called indigenous resurgence: the recovery and renewal of indigenous languages, knowledge, and political life. She was born in 1971 in Canada. She belongs to Alderville First Nation, a Mississauga Nishnaabeg community in southern Ontario. The Mississauga Nishnaabeg are part of the larger Anishinaabe (also spelled Nishnaabeg) family of nations. The Anishinaabe are one of the largest indigenous peoples in North America. Their territory traditionally covered much of what is now the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They have lived there for thousands of years. Simpson grew up between worlds. She is part of an Anishinaabe community. She also lived in non-indigenous Canadian society. She studied biology and resource management at university, earning her PhD in 1999. She was trained in Western academic methods. She was also learning her own people's language, ceremonies, and intellectual traditions. The combination shaped her work. She brings academic rigour to indigenous knowledge while also pushing back against academic frameworks that distort what they study. She has written or edited around a dozen books. She has produced several music albums. She co-founded the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in the Northwest Territories, an indigenous educational institution. She was a major voice during the Idle No More movement that began in 2012, a wave of indigenous political action across Canada. She is now in her fifties and remains one of the most active indigenous thinkers and artists in North America.

Origin
Mississauga Nishnaabeg / Canada
Lifespan
1971 - present
Era
Modern / 21st Century
Subjects
Indigenous Studies Anishinaabe Thought Decolonial Theory 21st Century North American Indigenous
Skills
Cultural Heritage And Identity Creative Expression Ethical Thinking Critical Thinking Research Skills
Why They Matter

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson matters for three reasons. First, she has helped develop the framework of indigenous resurgence. Earlier indigenous politics often focused on getting recognition, rights, or compensation from settler governments.

Resurgence is different

Its focus is internal

Recovering languages, ceremonies, knowledge, and political practices that colonisation tried to destroy. The settler state is largely beside the point. Indigenous nations rebuild their own ways of life on their own terms. The framework has shaped contemporary indigenous politics across Canada and beyond.

Second, she has insisted that indigenous knowledge is real knowledge, not folklore or myth. Her writing draws on Mississauga Nishnaabeg stories, ceremonies, and ways of relating to land and water. She presents these as sophisticated theoretical frameworks, not picturesque traditions. Her academic training lets her articulate this in ways that meet Western academic standards while refusing to reduce indigenous thought to Western categories. The work has been important in Indigenous Studies as a field.

Third, she has produced creative work alongside her scholarship. Her short story collections, especially Islands of Decolonial Love and This Accident of Being Lost, have been widely praised. Her music, recorded with collaborators including Cris Derksen, has won awards. The combination of academic, creative, and political work is unusual. She has shown that indigenous intellectual life is not just one thing. It crosses what Western culture treats as separate categories. The integrated approach has influenced a generation of younger indigenous writers and scholars.

Key Ideas
1
What Is Indigenous Resurgence?
2
Living in Two Worlds
3
Why Stories Matter
Key Quotations
"Resurgence is the act of building our own house, our own way, in our own time, on our own land."
— Paraphrased from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's writings on resurgence
Simpson articulates the core idea of indigenous resurgence in something like this language across her writings. The image is of building a house. The point is in the qualifying phrases. Our own house. Our own way. Our own time. Our own land. The qualifications matter because they push back against earlier indigenous politics. Earlier movements often built within frames the settler state had set. They asked permission. They followed timelines other people had imposed. They worked on land that had been taken. Resurgence rejects all this. The house is to be built by indigenous people, in indigenous ways, on their own schedule, on their own land. The settler state is largely beside the point. The image is concrete. It is also political. Building any kind of indigenous life on these terms requires political and material conditions that have often been denied. The work of resurgence is to create those conditions. For students, the image is a useful way into Simpson's wider thought. Indigenous resurgence is not abstract. It is real building, on real land, by real people.
"Our knowledge comes from the land, the water, the plants, and the animals as much as from our elders."
— Paraphrased from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's writings on indigenous knowledge
Simpson often emphasises that indigenous knowledge has more than human sources. Knowledge comes from elders who have lived and learned. It also comes from the land itself, from water, plants, and animals. Living attentively in a specific place teaches things that no human teacher can. The view is foreign to much Western thinking. Western culture often treats nature as a passive object that humans study. Simpson, drawing on Mississauga Nishnaabeg traditions, treats nature as a teacher. The relationships between humans and other beings can be educational, ethical, even spiritual. Modern environmental science has been moving slowly towards similar views. Indigenous traditions have held them for thousands of years. For students, the line is useful for thinking about where knowledge comes from. Books and teachers are valuable. The natural world is also a source of knowledge, if you know how to attend to it. Indigenous practices preserve ways of attending that mainstream education has often lost.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Cultural Heritage and Identity When introducing students to contemporary indigenous thought
How to introduce
Tell students that indigenous nations across North America are alive and active. Indigenous people are not just figures from history. They are working today on language revival, political organisation, art, and many other things. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is one of the most important contemporary indigenous thinkers. She is Mississauga Nishnaabeg, an indigenous nation of southern Ontario. She has written about ten books. She makes music. She helped found an indigenous educational centre. Discuss with students how this picture differs from common stereotypes of indigenous people. Indigenous communities today include scholars, activists, artists, doctors, teachers, lawyers, and people in every other field. The colonial past has not ended. The communities are alive and rebuilding. Simpson is a useful entry into this living indigenous world.
Critical Thinking When teaching students about different ways of knowing
How to introduce
Tell students that Simpson treats traditional Mississauga Nishnaabeg stories as serious knowledge, not just folklore. Stories carry careful thinking about ethics, ecology, politics, and many other subjects. Discuss with students how knowledge can take different forms. Western science is one form. Stories that have been told for generations carry information in a different form. So do songs, ceremonies, and place-based learning. Different forms of knowledge can do different jobs. Treating one form as the only real knowledge misses what others contribute. Simpson's work is one of the clearest contemporary arguments for taking indigenous knowledge seriously on its own terms, not just as raw material for Western analysis.
Cultural Heritage and Identity When teaching students about land-based education
How to introduce
Tell students about Simpson's idea of land as pedagogy. Mississauga Nishnaabeg traditional education happened in relationships with specific places: rivers, lakes, forests, gathering grounds. Children learned by working with adults on the land. They learned plant names, animal behaviour, seasonal cycles, ceremonies tied to specific places. Discuss with students whether they have learned things from being in particular places. Many people have. A favourite walking route. A garden. A coastline. Time in specific places teaches things that classrooms cannot. Modern education often takes children away from this kind of place-based learning. Simpson argues for recovering it. The discussion can connect to students' own experiences. Where have they learned things that schools could not teach?
Further Reading

For a first introduction, Simpson's As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (2017) is her major scholarly statement and is accessible to general readers. Her short story collection Islands of Decolonial Love (2013) gives a sense of her creative work. The CBC has produced several accessible interviews available online. The Yellowhead Institute publishes accessible policy work informed by similar thinking.

Key Ideas
1
Land as Pedagogy
2
The Sugar Bush
3
Idle No More
Key Quotations
"We need to stop asking permission to be ourselves."
— Paraphrased from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Idle No More writings (2012-2014)
Simpson made arguments like this during the Idle No More movement. Indigenous people, she said, had spent too long asking the Canadian government for permission to live as indigenous people. Permission to use their languages. Permission to practise ceremonies. Permission to govern themselves. Permission to use their land. The pattern was wrong. Indigenous people did not need permission. They could simply be themselves and build the lives they wanted. The view was provocative. It also captured something real. The permission framework had limits. Granted permissions could be revoked. The state remained in control of what was allowed. Simply being indigenous, on indigenous terms, did not need approval. The position is risky in practice. Settler states have power to make life difficult for those who refuse the permission framework. But the principle is clear. For intermediate students, the line is a useful study in political imagination. Sometimes the most powerful political move is refusing to play the game on the dominant side's terms. Simpson advocates this consistently.
"Reconciliation cannot be the goal. The goal must be transformation."
— Paraphrased from Simpson's responses to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015 onwards)
After Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings in 2015 about the residential school system that had abused indigenous children, the Canadian government emphasised reconciliation. Simpson and other indigenous thinkers pushed back. Reconciliation, they argued, suggests restoring a previously good relationship. The relationship between indigenous nations and Canada had never been good. There was nothing to reconcile to. What was needed was transformation, fundamental change in the relationship. Land needed to be returned. Power needed to be shared. Indigenous nations needed to be respected as nations. Reconciliation, on Simpson's view, was too soft a word. It let the settler state feel good about modest reforms while leaving the basic colonial relationship intact. The argument is sharp. It is also influential. Many indigenous thinkers and activists in Canada have shifted from talking about reconciliation to talking about land back, sovereignty, and structural change. For intermediate students, the line is a useful prompt about political language. The words we use shape what we can demand. Choosing reconciliation as a goal limits what comes next. Choosing transformation opens different possibilities.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Ethical Thinking When teaching students about historical injustice and what comes after
How to introduce
Tell students about the residential school system in Canada. From the 1880s to the 1990s, indigenous children were taken from their families and sent to schools designed to destroy their cultures. Many were physically and sexually abused. Many died. The schools were finally closed in the 1990s. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented the harm in 2015. Discuss with students Simpson's argument that 'reconciliation' is too soft a word. The relationship between Canada and indigenous nations had never been good. There is nothing to reconcile to. What is needed is transformation: returning land, sharing power, respecting indigenous nations as nations. The discussion is useful for thinking about how to address historical wrongs that have not ended. Different responses produce different futures. Simpson's framework has shaped contemporary indigenous politics across Canada.
Critical Thinking When teaching students about how political movements work
How to introduce
Tell students about the Idle No More movement that began in late 2012. Four indigenous women in Saskatchewan started teaching workshops about harmful Canadian government bills. The workshops became a national movement. Round dances were held in shopping malls and government buildings. Simpson was a major intellectual voice in the movement. Discuss with students how movements like this work. They often start small, with specific concerns. They can grow rapidly through social media and word of mouth. They draw energy from existing networks of activists, scholars, and community members. They produce both immediate political effects and longer changes in the public conversation. Idle No More did not achieve all its goals. It changed Canadian politics in lasting ways. Many social movements work this way.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back (2011) covers her resurgence framework in detail. Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (2020) is her experimental novel. The collected work Whose Land Is It Anyway? (2017), edited by Peter McFarlane and Nicole Schabus, gathers essays by Simpson and other indigenous thinkers. Glen Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks (2014) develops related arguments and is essential context.

Key Ideas
1
Refusing Recognition
2
Indigenous Feminism
3
Why She Writes Differently
Key Quotations
"Indigenous knowledge is not something to be extracted, validated, or proven by Western science."
— Paraphrased from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's writings on knowledge politics
Simpson has been sharp about how Western institutions sometimes engage with indigenous knowledge. The pattern she criticises is this: Western researchers come to indigenous communities. They take traditional knowledge. They publish it in academic journals or use it for commercial purposes. They cite it as 'valid' or 'confirmed by science'. The pattern looks respectful but is actually extractive. Indigenous knowledge is treated as raw material that becomes legitimate only when Western science approves it. Simpson rejects this. Indigenous knowledge has its own validity. It does not need Western confirmation. The relationship between indigenous knowledge and Western science can be respectful, but only when it is reciprocal. Western researchers must give as well as take. Indigenous communities must have control over how their knowledge is used. The view has shaped contemporary research ethics. Many universities now require careful protocols for research with indigenous communities. The protocols owe much to thinking like Simpson's. For advanced students, the framework is useful. It applies beyond indigenous knowledge to other situations where powerful institutions extract value from less powerful communities. Knowing the pattern helps resist it.
"Theory is everywhere among my people, even when we don't call it theory."
— Paraphrased from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's writings on indigenous intellectual traditions
Simpson often makes this argument in different forms. Western academia treats theory as a specific kind of writing produced by trained academics in journals and books. Simpson points out that Mississauga Nishnaabeg communities have always produced theory. Stories told around fires carry theory. Songs carry theory. Ceremonies carry theory. The forms are different from Western academic theory. The intellectual content is real. Calling something 'theory' only when it appears in approved Western forms is a form of intellectual colonialism. It says that indigenous thinking does not count as thinking unless it imitates Western thinking. Simpson refuses this framing. Her writing tries to honour indigenous theoretical work in its actual forms while also producing academic work that meets Western standards. The combination is hard. It requires careful attention to what counts as serious thought. For advanced students, the line raises important questions about how knowledge is recognised. Many cultures have produced sophisticated thinking in forms that Western academia does not easily recognise as theory. Recognising the wider range of intellectual work changes who counts as a thinker. Simpson is one major contemporary voice making this argument.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When teaching students about recognition and its limits
How to introduce
Discuss with advanced students Simpson's argument against recognition politics. Many movements have asked dominant governments to recognise the rights of marginalised groups. Recognition has done real good in some cases. Simpson argues it has limits. When the settler state recognises indigenous rights, the state controls the terms of recognition. Indigenous people remain dependent on the state's continued willingness to recognise. Real freedom, Simpson argues, requires building on different terms entirely. Discuss with students whether this argument is convincing. Different scholars have given different answers. The debate is alive in contemporary indigenous politics. The discussion can be applied to other social movements. Recognition is one strategy among several. Knowing its limits helps clarify what other strategies might be needed.
Creative Expression When teaching students about how form shapes content
How to introduce
Discuss with advanced students Simpson's deliberate mixing of forms in her books. Some chapters are academic essays. Some are short stories. Some are poems. Some are personal memoir. The forms shift within single books. Discuss with students why a writer might choose this approach. Western academia often separates research, fiction, and personal writing. Simpson refuses the separation because Mississauga Nishnaabeg knowledge does not respect it. Stories carry knowledge. Poems carry analysis. Personal experience is data. The form matches the content. Choosing different forms can let writers say things that conventional forms suppress. Discuss with students how their own writing might benefit from thinking about form. The way you write something shapes what you can say.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Indigenous resurgence means going back to a pre-colonial past.

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What to teach instead

It does not. Resurgence is about building indigenous futures, not recreating an idealised past. Mississauga Nishnaabeg communities today use modern technology, participate in contemporary economies, and engage with global issues. Resurgence draws on traditional knowledge and practices but does so in a contemporary context. Children learning Anishinaabemowin (the Anishinaabe language) often learn through apps and online resources alongside elders. Traditional ceremonies happen in modern community centres alongside ancient ceremonial grounds. Resurgence is not nostalgia. It is the active building of indigenous life now, drawing on ancestors' wisdom while addressing contemporary realities. Treating it as just a backward-looking movement misses its actual character.

Common misconception

All indigenous people share Simpson's views.

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What to teach instead

They do not. Indigenous peoples across North America include many nations with different traditions, political views, and approaches to engagement with settler states. Some indigenous thinkers strongly support recognition politics that Simpson criticises. Some indigenous communities focus on legal claims within Canadian or American frameworks. Some indigenous individuals support full assimilation into mainstream society. Indigenous political and intellectual life is as diverse as any other community's. Simpson is one major voice among many. Treating her views as representing all indigenous people misunderstands the actual diversity of indigenous thought. Different communities and individuals have made different choices for good reasons.

Common misconception

Her academic work is just personal opinion.

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What to teach instead

It is rigorous scholarship grounded in her cultural tradition and academic training. She has a PhD. Her books are published by major academic presses including the University of Minnesota Press. Her arguments are extensively documented and engage with wider scholarly debates in Indigenous Studies, political theory, and decolonial thought. Her use of stories and personal experience alongside academic analysis is a deliberate methodological choice, not a lack of rigour. Many serious scholars in many fields use multiple kinds of evidence. Simpson's work meets standards of careful thinking and clear argument. Dismissing it as personal opinion ignores both its scholarly content and its careful methodological reflection.

Common misconception

Indigenous knowledge is incompatible with Western science.

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What to teach instead

Simpson does not argue this. She argues against Western science being treated as the only valid form of knowledge. The two can coexist and even cooperate. Many contemporary projects in environmental science, ecology, and medicine combine indigenous traditional knowledge with Western scientific methods. The combination often produces better understanding than either alone. What Simpson opposes is one-sided extraction, where Western science takes from indigenous knowledge without giving anything back, or only validates indigenous knowledge by translating it into Western terms. Reciprocal, respectful collaboration is possible. Many indigenous scientists work this way. The picture of indigenous knowledge and Western science as completely opposed misunderstands contemporary practice.

Intellectual Connections
Develops
Vine Deloria Jr.
Deloria, the great Native American intellectual of the previous generation, set foundations that Simpson and others build on. His insistence that indigenous peoples could speak for themselves and that indigenous knowledge was real knowledge laid the ground for later resurgence thinking. Simpson works in a tradition Deloria helped establish, while pushing it in new directions. Reading them together gives students a sense of how a major intellectual tradition develops across generations. Deloria opened doors. Simpson and her contemporaries are walking through them and building further.
Complements
Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Smith, the Maori scholar, did foundational work on indigenous research methodology. Her book Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) shaped Indigenous Studies as a field. Simpson works in the same broad tradition, applied to North American indigenous contexts. Both insist that indigenous communities can study themselves on their own terms. Both push back against Western academic frameworks that distort what they study. Reading them together gives students a sense of how a global indigenous intellectual movement has developed across continents. Smith from Aotearoa (New Zealand). Simpson from Mississauga Nishnaabeg territory. The work converges.
Complements
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kimmerer, the Citizen Potawatomi botanist and writer, works in territory adjacent to Simpson's. Both are indigenous scholars who write about land, plants, and traditional knowledge for general audiences. Both push back against Western science as the only valid form of knowledge. Their styles differ. Kimmerer is more contemplative and accessible. Simpson is more politically sharp. Both are major contemporary indigenous voices. Reading them together gives students a sense of the range of contemporary indigenous intellectual writing. Different voices working on related questions in different ways.
Complements
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Oodgeroo, the Aboriginal Australian poet and activist, was working a generation before Simpson on related themes. Both are indigenous women who used multiple forms (poetry, prose, music, activism) to support their communities' continuing existence. Both faced settler colonial states that had tried to destroy their peoples' cultures. Both refused to let their communities be defined as past. Reading them together gives students a sense of how indigenous intellectual work has developed across continents and generations. The specific situations differ. The basic projects rhyme.
Complements
Audre Lorde
Lorde, the Black American feminist poet and essayist, worked in a tradition that Simpson draws on. Lorde's insistence that the personal is political, that poetry can carry serious thinking, and that liberation requires more than recognition all resonate in Simpson's work. Both are women of colour who have used multiple writing forms to do political and intellectual work. Reading them together gives students a sense of how feminist thinking from marginalised communities has shaped contemporary scholarship. Lorde set foundations. Simpson is one of many later thinkers building on what she made possible.
In Dialogue With
Frantz Fanon
Fanon, the Caribbean-born psychiatrist and revolutionary, wrote about the psychological and political effects of colonialism on colonised peoples. Simpson works in territory Fanon helped open. Both insist that real liberation requires more than legal or political recognition from colonial states. Both see colonialism as a deep structural problem requiring fundamental change. Their specific contexts differ. Fanon worked on French colonialism in the Caribbean and Africa. Simpson works on settler colonialism in North America. The basic theoretical frameworks have important continuities. Reading them together gives students a sense of how anti-colonial thought has developed across regions and generations.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, journals including Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society and Studies in American Indian Literatures publish current scholarship. Recent work by Audra Simpson, Melanie Yazzie, Robyn Maynard, Eve Tuck, and others extends related conversations. The Yellowhead Institute and other indigenous-led research organisations produce ongoing policy and theoretical work. Anishinaabemowin language resources are increasingly available online for those who wish to engage with the linguistic foundations of Simpson's thinking.