Storytelling is an emergent practice, and meaning for each individual listener will necessarily be different. The relationships between the storyteller and the listeners become the nest that cradles the meaning. The storyteller creates both the context and the content and collectively a plurality of meanings are generated through the experiences of the audience. The “analysis” and the “critical examination” are done with the utmost care and respect. Nishnaabeg storytellers, when telling in English, will use phrases such as “maybe it happened this way,” “some people say that’s what happened, I don’t know, I wasn’t there” or “I heard it happened that way, but I don’t know.” Revealing that one can only speak about what they know to be true from direct experience.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s nonfiction book Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (2011) considers what “resurgence” might mean for Indigenous people and communities. Her ways of thinking about resurgence are intimately connected to her thinking about story, especially the many forms of creation story. Suzanne and Chris reflect on and respond to Simpson's conceptions of what story is, how it relates to the essay, and what it makes possible.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: Dancing On Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence.

Leanne Simpson’s website.

Other books by Simpson include A Short History of the Blockade, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, and Rehearsals for Living (with Robyn Maynard).

Our episodes on Lee Maracle’s Memory Serves, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Augustine’s Confessions

Next: Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton, eds. Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers.