Theory of Water

Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead

By: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Narrated by: Tiffany Ayalik

Acclaimed Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson takes a revolutionary look at that most elemental force, water, and suggests a powerful path for the future.

For years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson took solace in skiing—in all kinds of weather across all forms of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home.

Recently, as she skied this path and meditated on our world’s uncertainty, environmental devastation, rising authoritarianism and ongoing social injustice, her mind turned to the water in the creek, the ice beneath her feet, and an elemental question: What might it mean to truly listen to water? To know water? To exist with and alongside water?

So began her quest to discover, understand and trace the historical and cultural interactions of Indigenous peoples with water in all its forms. Soon she began to see how a "Theory of Water" might lead to a radical rethinking of relationships between beings and forces in the world today.

In this inventive work, Simpson artfully weaves Nishnaabeg story and tradition with her own deep thinking and lived experience—and offers a vision of water as a catalyst for radical transformation, capable of birthing a new world.

©2025 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (P)2025 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

“One of the most urgent and necessary books I have read in a long time. Profoundly moving and unflinching, it is a deeply personal and generously expansive meditation on what it means to live in communion with the earth and its inhabitants, living, gone, and still to come. This beautiful book is a gesture of hope to a future that might still be possible, if we heed its lessons.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

“Theory of Water is a profound, beautifully made work of liberation by a writer deeply attuned to what matters in this world, how to listen to it, how to preserve it, and how to reframe our relationships to reflect it. This is not a book; it is a gift: we are lucky to have it.” —Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young

“In Theory of Water, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson moves much like her subject and inspiration—with fluidity as much as force, without fixity yet with steadiness and direction. Asking us to learn from the water that is inside us and between us, Simpson recovers indigenous knowledges that connect past and future but circumvent colonial histories. To make the world again, we are invited to decenter ourselves and join the flow. A powerful contribution to organizing and to being.” —Gina Dent, co-author of Abolition. Feminism. Now.