Handcrafting reconnection — between land, culture, and community.
InesSense is a Social Enterprise — mission centred — where profit serves purpose.
InesSense’s mission is to nurture reconnection between people and the living earth through mindful making, cultural remembrance, and community learning.
Through workshops and apprenticeships, I invite others to remember their belonging within nature and to participate in the healing of our shared world.
Together, we create natural handcrafted incense and naturally-dyed repurposed textiles using locally grown and ethically foraged plants, reviving traditional earth-based practices that honour respect, reciprocity, and responsibility to the land.
Through our hands, we remember the land.
Through our making, we restore our belonging.
Participants are guided through art- and folk-knowledge centred processes to develop cultural awareness, and embody principles of “right & relational living” while practicing skills in seasonal and ceremonial hand-crafting.
Care for the Land = Care for the Community = Care for the Individual
InesSense is committed to circular economy and environmental care through upcycling, reclamation, and local sourcing & production.
Core Values
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We honour the spirit in all things — land, plants, water, air, animals, ancestors, and people. Our work begins with gratitude and prayerful intention, recognizing that creation is a sacred act of relationship.
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We act with care and humility toward the living world and one another. Every decision — from harvesting to handcrafting to teaching — is guided by awareness of impact and by a commitment to do no harm.
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We give back to the land and community that sustain us. Through ethical foraging, material reuse, and community-based giving, we uphold the balance of exchange — taking only what is offered and offering in return.
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We live our values through conscious practice — tending the earth, uplifting others, and creating pathways of learning and contribution. Our responsibility is to ensure that our actions nurture continuity, integrity, and future thriving.
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We remember who we are and where we come from — re-membering ourselves (bringing ourselves back into membership) as part of the living earth. Through cultural craft, storytelling, and shared making, we restore belonging and connection between people, place, and spirit.
InesSense is founded by Nikki Manzie, multi-disciplinary artist, craftsperson, folk-knowledge facilitator, & (Slavic) earth-based spiritual guide and mentor.
My life and offerings are like a tapestry — varied fibres of study, practice and lived-experience, plied together as cords and interwoven into the offerings you find here.
My heart has always been centred in my relationship to the land and Spirit. These relationships form the warp and weft of the tapestry of my life and offerings.
The texture, colour and ever-evolving design arise from the pathways I have studied, practiced and taught, & the relationships to precious Others I am priveleged to love and serve as family, friends, clients and students.
I have practiced art and crafts for over 40 years. I have worked as a therapist and teacher of earth-based spirituality and medicine for 32 years. The two disciplines combine as I explore and integrate the crafts and folk healing traditions of my Ukrainian grandparents.
The interdisciplinary nature of traditional handcrafts combines knowledge of life- and seasonal-rites, herbs, folk healing, “magical” traditions, and earth-based practices along with technical skill of the craft. As a relational maker, I bring this knowledge and crafting into the current focus of my work: “How do Ukrainian Canadians (any settlers) root their sacred knowledge and traditions in a land where they are (invited/ uninvited) guests?” Through my work I seek to stimulate inquiry in self and others about “right relationship” to land, community, and peoples.
Through handcraft- and land-based processes in the form of exhibits, individual mentorship sessions, seasonal workshops, and 1-to-3-year programs, I facilitate cultural awareness, self-empowerment, deep introspection, and aligned living.
I have included links to my current CV’s for those interested in knowing more about my professional background:
“As you enter the forest, do not look with your ordinary eyes, do not listen with your ordinary ears, do not feel or see with your ordinary heart…”
