Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory

In late September 2023, project tech Kohen Hammond and I filled a cargo van with the exhibit, food for ten days, his recording equipment, and both our bikes, then drove 6 hours straight north from Toronto.  We were taking the Wikwemikong Nursing Home Chair home for a visit, along with the rest of the exhibit. As my colleague Matthew Assiniwe reminded me, it’s important that what comes from the community goes back to the community.

The exhibit was shown first at Amikook Seniors Centre, then we moved it down the street to the nursing home. We were on Manitoulin Island for the Wiikwemkoong Fall Fair and the lead up to TRC Day, swimming in Lake Huron, interviewing interesting people, and hanging out at two aspirational Indigenous seniors’ facilities in the community that brought back the pow wow in 1961. Kohen slashed his head open on the ceiling of the van when we were unloading at Amikook and had three aunties to take care of him. Matthew texted me: I see you driving your bike down the road to the nursing home.

Talking to the nursing home community about CIHO, I explained that people across Canada had encountered the Wikwemikong Nursing Home Chair, listening to its stories, and reflecting on the knowledge that it holds. Then Matthew sang the Bear Song and played the drum that Karen Lewis’s daughter had gifted to her mum’s exhibit chair.  I envisioned the music shifting westward, all the way to the unceded territories of the Squamish Nation, where Karen had been a girl, a mum, and a working woman, where her grandparents taught her to fish and spoke to her in the language – before residential school.  Well, I was imagining, but I had also taken over Matthew’s job of serving residents a feast of crackers, cheese, and fruit that the chef had made for our event.

Opportunities for learning, connecting, and making public the story of the Wikwemikong Nursing Home continue. Darrel Manitowabi, a community member and faculty at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, was there at the nursing home event to tell staff and residents that we were creating a series of four episodes about the nursing home for CIHO’s podcast series.

Miigwech: Matthew Assiniwe, Darrel Manitowabi, Elizabeth Cooper, Cathy Mishibinijima, Melissa Cooper. The residents, workers and family members who we interviewed in 2022 and 2023. The women who worked so hard to make things ready for us at Amikook. And the welcoming nursing home residents and staff.

Below, we present a selection of art made for the nursing home chair and audio clips pulled from the nursing home podcasts.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page to access the complete set of Wikwemikong Nursing Home interviews that were made in 2022 and 2023 for the chair audio and podcast. All the interviews have been transcribed.

Art Gallery

Residents at Wikwemikong Nursing Home created a series of art cards for the nursing home chair in Spring 2022. Below we have reproduced images of each of the seven cards and another made at the CIHO Story Space.

Audio Clips

These audio clips are pulled from the four-part podcast series Stories from Wikwemikong Nursing Home, available on this website or wherever you get your podcasts: PodBean, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, PlayerFM, ListenNotes.