Canadian Literature Centre Welcome to the Canadian Literature Centre
Join us on Thursday, March 12, 2021 for the 2020 CLC Kreisel Lecture with renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who will be delivering her original lecture titled: A Short History of the Blockade: Giant Beavers, Diplomacy & Regeneration in Nishnaabewin.
“This lecture uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories, storytelling aesthetics and practices to explore the generative nature of Indigenous blockades through our relative, the beaver or in Nishnaabemowin, amik. Moving through genres, shifting through time, amikwag stories become a lens for the life giving possibilities of dams and the world building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance, as a negation and an affirmation.”
The lecture will be recorded by CBC Radio One “Ideas,” and will be followed by a reception and book signing.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song, bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Working for over a decade as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and has twenty years of experience with Indigenous land-based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh. Her latest book, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance was published by the University of Minnesota Press in the fall of 2017, and was awarded Best Subsequent Book by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.
Leanne was named the inaugural RBC Charles Taylor Emerging writer by Thomas King in 2014 and in 2017/18 she was a finalist in the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award. She has published extensive fiction and poetry in both book and magazine form. Her second book of short stories and poetry, This Accident of Being Lost is a follow-up to the acclaimed Islands of Decolonial Love in Spring 2017.
Leanne is Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg and a member of Alderville First Nation.
Thursday, March 12, 2021 | 7:30 PM | Pay What You Can
Timms Centre for the Arts, University of Alberta
