Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: Noopiming
The Cure for White Ladies
Akiwenzii is the old man and their will. Ninaatig is the maple tree; they are their lungs. Mindimooyenh is the old woman who holds it all together; she is their conscience. Sabe, the honest sasquatch, is the marrow in their bones. Adik is the caribou and their nervous system. Asin, human, is their eyes and ears; Lucy, human, their mind. Together they are Mashkawaji, our narrator, who may be frozen stiff but still remembers a time of connection everywhere.
When Mashkawaji’s parts attempt to commune with the world around them, they find it’s a strange place, full of SpongeBob Band-Aids and branded coffee mugs. Exposing the unnatural solitude at the heart of settler-capitalism and fully grounded in Indigenous ways of being, Noopiming offers a moving and wickedly funny vision of what modern togetherness might look like – even as it breaks open the self to a world still alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits.
