The Power Plant

In this edition of Cross Circuits, we are honoured to welcome Waubgeshig Rice, a celebrated Anishinaabe writer and journalist, to reflect on our current exhibitions by Jeneen Frei Njootli and Lucy Raven. Rice brings a rich and deeply rooted voice, grounded in Anishinaabe knowledge, traditional skills, and storytelling, to illuminate themes of water justice, land, and belonging. Rice will draw on his own writing and lived experiences to explore how Anishinaabe history, culture, and practices offer essential frameworks for understanding and responding to environmental injustice. He will reflect on how stories, whether written, spoken, or shared in community, act as vessels of knowledge, resilience, and resistance, particularly in the face of colonial histories and ongoing ecological transformation.

Waubgeshig Rice has written four books, most notably the bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) and its sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves (2023).

Waubgeshig graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002 and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career.

In addition to his writing, he is an engaging public speaker, delivering keynote addresses and workshops, participating in multimedia interviews, and contributing to panels at literary festivals and conferences. He speaks on topics including creative writing and oral storytelling, contemporary Anishinaabe culture, Indigenous representation in arts and media, and more.

He lives in Sudbury, Ontario, with his wife and three sons.