An interesting cross-genre book on water and our relationship to and with it. I’ve read a bit — but fairly minimally — about Indigenous views on water before, and I felt like this was a really insightful examination that had me nodding along quite a bit at times or looking up additional books to read. There was an anecdote within where an Elder talked about how when they were younger their Elders warned them of a time when water would have to be purchased — now, we see water as so expensive, weaponized, political, etc. that imagining what it used to be like feels almost impossible. I appreciated especially the author’s discussions of colonialism in regard to how outside people sanitize Indigenous culture, e.g. ignoring or watering down Indigenous anti-landownership philosophies while simultaneously promoting Indigenous research into animal migration patterns. It commodifies their knowledge and experience in a way that is distasteful and had me reflecting on my place in reading this book and others like it.

I’d recommend this book to readers that enjoy learning about Indigenous philosophies and meditating on how water plays a role in modern conflicts.

This review was written with temporary free digital access to an ARC of the book. Thank you!

I think this was an excellent collection of essays on Indigenous ways of looking at nature, but I did feel that near the end it was getting extremely repetitive. This collection was very relaxing and put me in a calming frame of mind, and I'd recommend curling up on a day off of work to realx and give these essays all your attetion.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers a powerful meditation on water as both elemental force and guiding philosophy for resisting capitalism, dispossession, and violence. Drawing on Nishnaabeg wisdom, Simpson asks us to listen deeply—to snow, to creeks, to our own breath—and to embrace cyclical time and the practice of “sintering,” a communal bond-building that weaves us together with the land without destroying it. She argues that we urgently need to learn how to dream and co-resist alongside anti‑colonial movements in our struggle towards liberation.

Against the backdrop of climate catastrophe, genocide in Gaza, Sudan, and the Congo, and the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, Simpson’s writings remind us that feeling helpless is not the same as being useless. Indigenous ways of knowing reveal multiple pathways to live contrary to the status quo, insisting that we cannot talk about Indigenous liberation without planetary liberation. This is a beautifully written, urgently needed gift of regenerative thinking and embodied practice.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reader copy!

If you’ve read this column before, you may recall that I am a huge fan of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s blending and bending of genre, style and voice. Her latest is an urgent and intimate exploration of water.

Theory of Water is a timely, innovative, and important book. Simpson is not only a great activist but a genius thinker, demonstrated clearly in her work as she ponders liberation and a better future for us all.

Thank you, Net Galley, for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review. The Theory of Water is beautifully written prose that highlights the issue of declining water supply. Capitalism has forced us to abandon indigenous knowledge systems, and this rich narrative tells us why we need to rethink our current global means. The world depends on indigenous knowledge to survive and protect our waters, but capitalism harms indigenous peoples and their traditions because it does not produce the capital they want to see. Capitalism benefits from harm and the only way to reduce the harm is to revolt against the current system for the original systems.

She discusses the need to work together and as bodies of water, such as rivers connect us all. We are all reliant on each other and need to learn to cohabitate in an environment that helps instead of dividing us further into individualistic categories. There is much to learn from the water and the animal kingdom, as this decrees. The prose, the lists, the poems all serve a purpose throughout this narrative to help us understand the knowledge we are missing out on if we continue down the path of capitalism. These indigenous stories are important and we need to embrace our knowledge instead of repressing it.

Thanks for this wonderful read and my only complaint is that I feel there is more to learn, but this book serves its purpose without overloading the readers with information. The blend of pose, marginalized voices, and poetry really brings the narrative and the authors perspective to focus. The purposeful writing is inspiring to fight back against culture that represses critical knowledge systems and infrastructures. Buy this book – share this narrative. Our water is our life force.

I found "Theory of Water" not only to be deeply rich in material to reflect upon thanks to Simpsons' specifically Nishnaabe/Ashinabe perspective (a perspective I admittedly don't get a lot of, to understate things a bit), but also an unexpectedly educational read as well. There was a surprisingly wealth of historical and scientific contextual background that I did not expect, but even more important was the sizable amount that I felt I learned about a wide array of different ingenious/First nations' cultural traditions. This is definitely a word I see myself returning to again and again, with something new to learn every time.

4.5⭐️

[a copy of this book was provided to me by the published from netgalley. thank you!]

a beautiful book about our relationship with water. I learned a lot about colonisation & dispossession, and found this to be a very interesting and insightful read