Leanne Betasamosake Simpson Books In Order

Publication Order of The Debwe Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, artist, and writer, that has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. She is a member of Alderville First Nation. Her work breaks open the intersections story, politics, and song—bringing some audiences into a layered and rich world of sovereign creativity, light, and sound.

Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, she has taught and lectured at universities extensively across the United States and Canada. She has twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. She has a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.

“This Accident of Being Lost”, which won the MacEwan University Book of the Year, and was called a best book of the year by Quill & Quire, Globe and Mail, and the National Post. “As We Have Always Done” was given Best Subsequent Book by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Thomas King named her the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer in the year 2014, and that same year, her article “Land as Pedagogy” won the ‘Most thought-provoking’ award in Native and Indigenous Studies.

She is also a musician that combines storytelling, song-writing, poetry, and performance in collaboration with musicians in order to create some unique spoken songs and soundscapes.

Leanne was born in the year 1971 and raised in Wingham, Ontario, by Diane Simpson (her Nishnaabeg mom) and Barry Simpson, her dad of Scottish ancestry. Even though her parents still reside in Wingham, Leanne lives in Peterborough.

“Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 2011. A lot of people promote Reconciliation as a “new” way for Canada to be able to relate to Indigenous People. Here, Leanne asserts that reconciliation has to be grounded in political resurgence and has to support the regeneration of Indigenous languages, traditions of governance, and oral cultures.

Leanne explores pathways and philosophies of resurgence, regeneration, and a new emergence through the Nishnaabeg language, Creation Stories, walks with the Elders and kids, protests and celebrations, and meditations on each of these experiences. She stresses the very importance of illuminating Indigenous intellectual traditions to transform their relationship to the Canadian state.

“Islands of Decolonial Love” is a collection of short stories that was released in the year 2013. Leanne explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, particularly those from her own Nishnaabeg nation.

Simpson’s characters, found in cities and small towns, reserves, in curling rinks and bars, community centres and canoes, pickup trucks and doctors offices, confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire live observant and loving lives. All with the constant struggle to just survive the ongoing and historical injustices of colonialism and racism.

Told with voices that are rarely recorded yet need to be heard, and incorporating the history and language of her own people.

“As We Have Always Done” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 2017. that was released in the year 2017. All over North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent days opposed the removal of federal protections for waterways and forests in Indigenous lands, and halted the pipeline construction at Standing Rock and the expansion of tar sands extraction. As well as demanding justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women. Leanne locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice that is rooted in uniquely Indigenous writing, theorizing, thinking, and organizing.

Indigenous resistance is one way of radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused on the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous land and bodies. Simpson makes it clear that it goal cannot be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in the multicultural mosaic any longer. Instead she calls for place-based and unapologetic alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, which includes white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalist exploitation.

The book is a compelling read and her arguments are well-presented, if at times they are verbose.

“This Accident of Being Lost” is a collection of short stories that was released in the year 2017. Poet and provocateur, she continually rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles out and in of time and it resists comfortable categorization of any kind or dominant narratives.

A crow watches over a deer that is addicted to road salt. Lovers are visiting the final remaining corer of the boreal forest. Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while they text “Are they getting it?” three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in one upper middle-class neighborhood. Finally, Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario.

With Simpson’s distinct voice, this collection has got it all: heart wrenching tales, stunning writing, important statements, and sharp wit.

“Noopiming” is a novel that was released in the year 2020. Mashkawaji (they/them) lies in the ice frozen and remembering a long-ago period in time of hopeless connection and now finding solace and freedom in isolate suspension. They introduce use to seven main characters. There is Lucy (the human that represents their brain), Ninaatig (the maple tree representing their lungs), Akiwenzii (the old guy that represents the will of the narrator), Mindimooyenh (the old woman that represents their whole conscience), Sabe (the giant representing their marrow), and Adik (the caribou that represents their nervous system).

Each one attempts to commune with the rather unnatural urban-settler world, a world filled with Ziploc baggies, coffee mugs with institutional logos on them, Fjallraven Kanken backpacks and SpongeBob Band-Aids. Each one hunts out the natural world, just to find those pockets that still exist are now contained, consumed, counted, and owned. Cut off from from nature, these characters are cut off from each of their natural selves.

Leanne’s work is like letting your guard down and only listening to the story that you are being offered. Leanne’s presence is felt so very strongly here, as there is a loving, constant, and iterative questioning in each of the narrative voices in the book that gives it such life and personality.