Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s multimodal work as a Nishnaabeg theorist (e.g., As We’ve Always Done), musician (e.g., Theory of Ice), storyteller (e.g., Islands of Decolonial Love), and organizer (e.g., A Short History of the Blockade) organizes her decolonial art and education practices around “the liberation of living beings” in an ecocidal, genocidal world. Enacting “the liberatory potential of Indigenous Knowledge systems,” Simpson’s work has had a profound impact within and beyond the academy. Her latest book, Theory of Water: Nishnabee Maps to the Times Ahead (Haymarket 2025), poses our panel’s guiding questions: How might humanities education “serve as microsite of world making”? What must we unlearn to enable the embodied, relational practices of pedagogy Simpson calls forth?

Simpson joins many other Indigenous theorists (including Eve Tuck, Glen Sean Coulthard, Daniel Heath Justice, Heidi Stark, Aaron Mills, and Zoe Todd) who challenge us to practice decolonial critique not only in, but also on post-secondary institutions that continue to be shaped by settler colonialism and racial capitalism. We aim to assemble an interdisciplinary panel of scholars, artists, educators who are likewise investigating the conditions under which humanities education might help scaffold “world building toward liberation.” We invite a wide-ranging conversation that takes seriously Simpson’s animating insight: “It’s not just pedagogy. It’s how to live life” (“Land as Pedagogy”). 

We encourage participants to approach Simpson’s work as an occasion to explore a variety of topics including (but not limited to): land-based and water-based pedagogical practices; the intersections (and incompatibilities) of Indigenous resurgence and humanities education; embodied and relational methods of teaching and learning; Indigenous knowledges as practices of liberation; the role of cultural activism in anti-colonial education; grounded normativity as a critique of the neoliberal university; decolonial art and education as “world-making practices.” 

Anyone interested in submitting a proposal for this seminar should first contact the organizers at [email protected] and [email protected].