In As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance, published in 2017, Simpson articulates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous thinking and practice. She calls for an Indigenous resurgence rooted not in demands for assimilation but in offering land-based Indigenous alternatives to colonial hegemony. In chapter 9, "Land and Pedagogy," an essay for which Simpson won the 'Most thought-provoking" award in Native and Indigenous Studies, she uses stories of the Nishnaabeg people to argue for a radical break from state education systems designed to produce settler colonial subjects and advocates instead for a form of education that reclaims land as pedagogy, both as process and context for a rebellious transformation of Nishnaabeg intelligence and identity. The result, she contends, will be a generation of Nishnaabeg peoples with the knowledge and skills necessary to rebuild a society based on Nishnaabeg values.
