Manitoulin Island is an island in Lake Huron, located within the borders of the Canadian province of Ontario, in the bioregion known as Laurentia. With an area of 2,766 km2 (1,068 sq mi), it is the largest lake island in the world, large enough that it has over 100 lakes itself. In addition to the historic Anishinaabe and European settlement of the island, archaeological discoveries at Sheguiandah have demonstrated Paleo-Indian and Archaic cultures dating from 10,000 BC to 2,000 BC.
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. They are Indigenous peoples of the Subarctic and Northeastern Woodlands.
Tomson Highway is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, novelist, and children's author. He is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.
Georgian Bay is a large bay of Lake Huron, in the Laurentia bioregion. It is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. The main body of the bay lies east of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. To its northwest is the North Channel.
The Odawa, believed to derive from an Anishinaabe word meaning "traders", are an Indigenous American ethnic group who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, commonly known as the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. They have long had territory that crosses the current border between the two countries, and they are federally recognized as Native American tribes in the United States and have numerous recognized First Nations bands in Canada. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe and Potawatomi peoples.
The Debajehmujig Storytellers, also Debahehmyjig Theatre Group, or informally Debaj, is a First Nations theatre group and multi-arts organization based in the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario. Debaj is the longest running Indigenous theatre in North America.
The Wiikwemkoong First Nation is a First Nation on Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario. The Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory is the First Nation reserve in the northeast of Manitoulin Island in Manitoulin District, Ontario, Canada. Wiikwemkoong is an unceded Indigenous reserve in Canada, which means that it has not "relinquished title to its land to the government by treaty or otherwise."
Ottawa or Odawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken by the Odawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma. The first recorded meeting of Ottawa speakers and Europeans occurred in 1615 when a party of Ottawas encountered explorer Samuel de Champlain on the north shore of Georgian Bay. Ottawa is written in an alphabetic system using Latin letters, and is known to its speakers as Nishnaabemwin 'speaking the native language' or Daawaamwin 'speaking Ottawa'.
Assiginack is a township in the Canadian province of Ontario, located on Manitoulin Island. An Ontario Historical Plaque was built on the grounds of the Assiginack Museum by the province to commemorate the Manitoulin Treaties' role in Ontario's heritage.
Shannon E. Hengen, Ph.D., is a literary critic and professor of Canadian and women's literature at Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada where she formerly served as chairperson for the Department of English. Her specialities include dramatic comedy, aboriginal theatre, contemporary feminist writing, and Margaret Atwood. The theory that most informs her work involves performance, carnival, and gender. The aspect of literary style that most concerns her is voice, and the theme that most intrigues her at present is marriage. She has written or edited numerous books.
Crystal Shawanda is a Canadian blues and country music artist. CMT documented her rise to fame in the six-part series Crystal: Living the Dream, which was broadcast in February 2008. Signed to RCA Nashville in 2007, she released her first single, "You Can Let Go", in Canada in January 2008. It was the fastest climbing single on the Canadian Country Singles Chart since Carolyn Dawn Johnson's "Georgia" in 2000, reaching the Top 10 in five weeks. It was released in the United States on February 25, 2008.
Joseph Anthony de la Rivière Poncet was a French Jesuit missionary to Canada.
Shirley Cheechoo is a Canadian Cree actress, writer, producer, director, and visual artist, best known for her solo-voice or monodrama play Path With No Moccasins, as well as her work with De-Ba-Jeh-Mu-Jig theatre group. Her first break came in 1985 when she was cast on the CBC's first nations TV series Spirit Bay, and later, in 1997, she found a role on the CBC's TV series The Rez.
Jean-Baptiste Assiginack was an Odawa leader in the early 19th-century. He was also known as "Blackbird," a literal translation of his name in the Anishinaabe language.
Paul Thompson O.C. is a Canadian playwright and theatre director. Best known for his term as artistic director of Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Ontario from 1970 to 1982, Thompson was known for pioneering techniques of collective creation, in which actors, playwrights and directors would collaborate on the creation of a play through field research and acting improvisations. Plays on which Thompson was credited as a primary or collaborating writer during this era included Doukhobors (1970), The Farm Show (1972), 1837: The Farmers' Revolt, I Love You, Baby Blue (1975), Far As the Eye Can See and Maggie and Pierre.
Anishinabe Spiritual Centre is a Roman Catholic centre for Ignatian spirituality and training in ministry run by the Society of Jesus in Espanola, Ontario, specifically for the local First Nation people in the area. It is situated to the south of Espanola, on the shore of Anderson Lake, just off Ontario Highway 6. Since it was founded, it has been the only place in northern Ontario that has offered Roman Catholic ministerial training to Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Jeannette Corbiere Lavell is a Canadian and Anishinaabe community worker who focused on women's and children's rights. In 2018, she was honoured as a member of the Order of Canada.
George G. Epoch was a Canadian priest, a member of the Jesuit Fathers of Upper Canada. From 1971 to 1983, Epoch abused over 120 children at the Jesuit mission of Wikwemikong and St Mary's church of Cape Kroker and Saugeen, all of which are first nations reserves in Ontario, Canada.
Treaty 45, referred to variously as the Manitoulin Island treaty, the treaty of Manitowaning, or the Bond Head treaty, is a treaty that, by its terms, converted the whole of Manitoulin Island, then in Upper Canada, into a reserve.
