Brief history
Manitoulin is the world’s largest freshwater island (at over 2700 square kilometres) and about a quarter of its twelve thousand inhabitants are Aboriginals, descendants of groups believed to have arrived here over ten thousand years ago. Archeologists have uncovered evidence of these Paleoamericans at Sheguiandah, on the east coast, and the small display of artefacts at the museum here contains some of the oldest human traces found in Ontario. Much later, in 1836, the island’s Aboriginal peoples – primarily Ojibwa and Odawa – reluctantly signed a treaty that turned Manitoulin into a refuge for several Georgian Bay bands, who had been dispossessed by white settlers. Few of them came, which was just as well because the whites soon revised their position and wanted the island all for themselves. In 1862, this pressure culminated in a second treaty that gave most of the island to the newcomers. It was all particularly shabby and, to their credit, the Ojibwa band living on the eastern tip of the island at Wikwemikong refused to sign. Their descendants still live on this so-called “unceded reserve” and, during the third weekend in August, hold the largest pow wow in the country (w wikwemikong.ca).