Resurgent Water in Nishnaabeg Storytelling

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's "She Sang Them Home" and "Big Water"

Abstract

Drawing on Indigenous resurgence, the regenerative movement that revitalizes languages, traditions, and cultures while aiming at pan-Indigenous sovereignty, this paper focuses on Nishnaabeg resurgent advocacy and aesthetics. The Nishnaabeg (Ojibwe, Michi Saagiig, Chippewa, Algonquin, Salteaux, and Odawa) are a transnational Indigenous people whose ancestral land spreads across the two sides of the US-Canada border. Due to the several freshwaters that cross Nishnaabeg land, colonial dispossession and extractivism in this region have systematically affected bodies of water. Water symbolism is also present in the aandisokaanan, the traditional creation stories of the Nishnaabeg inspired by the land and revived through land-based practices. Finally, the Nishnaabeg resurgent advocacy is deeply soaked into water, as evidenced by the Mother Earth Water Walks (MMEW) movement. Inspired by cultural reinvigoration and political advocacy, Nishnaabeg artists continue to generate dibaajimowinan, new stories of resurgence, in which water still constitutes a fil rouge. Given these premises, this paper presents two Nishnaabeg water stories by Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who contributed to the resurgent scholarship by theorizing Radical Resurgence (2017a). Engaging with water symbolism, the first section analyzes Simpson’s song “She Sang Them Home” published in her debut collection Islands of Decolonial Love (2015). Focusing on the author’s use of code-switching, whereby the Nishnaabeg language is inserted without translation in the poetic flow, this section meditates on resurgent “storied waterscapes” (Oppermann, 2023). Adopting a hydrofeminist perspective (Neimanis, 2017), the second section presents Simpson’s short story “Big Water” from the collection This Accident of Being Lost (2017b). Reflecting on Nishnaabeg ecofeminism, ethical human/non-human relationships in the story are thus framed as “bodies of water” (Neimanis, 2009; 2017). Proposing an alternative to the anthropocentric dominant discourse about wet matter, Simpson’s fluid poetics suggest an alternative ethical relationship with water to envision new livable futures.