When Terry Jenkins was a child, Indigenous horses ran wild on Wapole Island and in the late 1960s these ponies were eradicated from the island and the culture of their native people. Terry's dad, Ernie Jenkins brought home a trailer load of these ponies and it triggered wonderment in a young child's eyes. When Terry established TJ Stables in 1986, she made it a mission to find descendants of these Indigenous horses. Sadly by 1977, there were only four left in the world. The Ojibway Horse Society put a call out to find breeders interested in resurrecting descendants of this rare and endangered Indigenous breed carrying the same blood lines as the elusive Walpole Island ponies. Terry made the trip to Fort Francis, Ontario where she met and brought home a small herd of Ojibway Spirit Horses (also known as Lac Lacroix Indigenous ponies) to continue on the legacy of the Native elders who said, "The little horses were always here".
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Terry Jenkins, founder of TJ Stables and Metis husband John Basden with the rare Ojibway Spirit Horses. These rare and endangered Indigenous ponies, once plentiful in the Great Lakes region, have returned to their ancestral roots.
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Spirit Horse Journey
The teachings... The Creator told horses to bond with the heartbeat of Mother Earth. The horses heard the drumming of the First Nations people and interpreted the drumming as that heartbeat.
The horses bonded with the First People and lived in harmony. |
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Recent ProjectsWoodland Artist, Rhonda Snow depicts true, oral stories told to her by First Nations' elders about the little horses from the big woods. Each image comes with the oral story as interpreted by the artist.
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Colours in prints are more vivid than they appear on this website.
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