Philosophy
Simpson grounds Indigenous freedom, refusal and resurgence in Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg intellectual practice, land and relationship.
A society can measure its riches in networks of deep, fluid relationships of trust rather than in accumulated capital. In this view, the world holds relatives, clans and treaty partners, and calling them 'resources' is itself a basic mistake.
The absence of a capitalist economy need not reflect a lack of skill or technology. A people can have the knowledge to build one and still decline, because doing so would break their core ethics about how to relate to each other and the natural world.
Practice and theory generate knowledge together. Practices are politics and processes are governance. Mistakes and repeated attempts teach, while thinking alone, cut off from place and movement, produces nothing reliable.
Understanding comes from what the land teaches. Natural beings such as moss, trees or geese can be read as working solutions to problems, models of how to live that run against accumulation.
Authority in this way of living stops at a person's own body and the relationships that make it up. It is never a tool for controlling other bodies or the means of production. Self-determination and consent sit at the centre of social life.
Power can come from declining to negotiate with governments on their terms, at their pace, and with their definition of the problem. Taking part in processes built by the dominant system tends to reinforce that system rather than disrupt it.
Reviving a culture so that it can be accepted as one more tile in a national mosaic leaves the underlying dispossession intact. The goal is instead to build place-based alternatives to the state's logics of exploitation, white supremacy and rigid gender hierarchy.
Seeking recognition from the state that dispossessed you keeps that state in charge. Recognition that matters comes from a people seeing themselves in relation with each other and with the environment.
Few people openly endorse dispossession, but many work hard to preserve the social and economic systems built on it. So allies are asked to stop 'helping' and to struggle with their own country's foundations.
Continuing a practice whether or not the state permits it is itself resistance. Hunting where your people always have, with or without permission, refuses the claim over land. It reproduces the way of life for generations not yet born.