Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead

Winner of the 2025 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Nonfiction

A genre-bending exploration of that most elemental force, water, through Indigenous storytelling, personal memory, and the work of influential artists and writers.

For many years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson took solace in skiing through all kinds of weather, on all kinds of snow, and across all kinds of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home. As she skied against the backdrop of environmental devastation, rising authoritarianism, and ongoing social injustice, her attention turned to the water flowing beside her and an elemental question: What might it mean to truly listen to water? To know water? To exist with and alongside water?

That question became the starting point for a profound exploration of her people's historical, cultural, and ongoing relationships with water in all its forms, including ice, snow, rain, perspiration, and breath. As these threads come together, Simpson begins to imagine a "Theory of Water" that invites a radical rethinking of our relationships with one another and the living world.

Drawing on Nishnaabeg origin stories, personal memory, and the work of influential artists and writers, Simpson reimagines water as a source of knowledge, connection, resilience, and transformation. Theory of Water is a luminous meditation on Indigenous ways of knowing and a compelling invitation to envision a more just, interconnected future.