Manitoulin Island is named as the place where Josime has returned to older ways and where Aaron might seek knowledge of a Mi’kmaw life no longer readily available elsewhere. It becomes a hoped-for destination in a family dispute over belonging, inheritance, and the possibility of finding continuity in a transformed landscape; the book presents the journey as a proposal, not a completed visit.

A Destination in a Family Search

Jinot urges Aaron to go west to Manitoulin Island and seek Josime, his uncle. Aaron has expressed a wish to find Sel relatives in Nova Scotia, while Jinot argues that Josime offers something different: a person with a name and a place through whom Aaron might approach the older forest life of their people. Jinot acknowledges that Josime is Odaawa, not Mi’kmaq, but still regards his life as a possible source of knowledge.

The Journey That Does Not Happen

Jinot offers to accompany Aaron to Manitoulin Island after they return from New Zealand. Aaron refuses the immediate ocean voyage to New Zealand, writes a brief note to his father, and says he will go to Nova Scotia and then seek Josime. The proposed visit to the island therefore remains deferred; the narrative does not establish that Aaron reaches it.

A Fragile Refuge

Jinot’s recommendation carries hope, but not certainty. He privately wonders whether the influence of white ways has extended even as far as Manitoulin Island and the Odaawa. The island is thus imagined as a place where older knowledge might still be found, while the possibility of its survival is left unsettled. Its narrative significance lies in that tension: it gives Aaron a concrete destination for seeking kin and cultural knowledge without promising that any place has been untouched by change.