Nikki

This painting of Nikki was painted for the Ridvan 2022 edition of e*lix*ir online magazine Sandra Lynn Hutchison, Editor, describes our joint project: This issue of elixir is devoted to reflection on our “Green Island” and on the virtue of trustworthiness — its presence and its absence in our world. In the art section, we feature paintings by Pam Jackson and Nikki Manitowabi, both long-time residents of Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, a place that is, quite literally, a green island for much of the year. Carried forward on the wings of prayer, their joint art project gives us a glimpse of life on an island that has, in recent times, become home to a community of white settlers, but which has long been home to a confederacy of Anishinaabe tribes — the Odawa, the Ojibway, and the Pottawatomi — and remains the site of the only unceded indigenous land in Ontario.