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Jeannette Armstrong is an Okanagan Canadian author, educator, artist, and activist. She was born in 1948 and grew up on the Penticton Indian reserve in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. more...

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Armstrong has lived on the Penticton Indian Reserve for most of her life and has raised her two children there as well (Beeler).

Armstrong’s 1985 work Slash is considered the first novel by a Native woman in Canada (Voices and Lutz 13). Armstrong is the grand-niece of Mourning Dove (1888-1936), also known as Hum-Ishu-Ma and Christine Quintasket, who is regarded as one of the earliest Native American woman novelists for her 1927 work Cogewea, the Half-Blood (Voices and Lutz 13).

Armstrong is best known for her involvement with the En’owkin Centre, writing, and perspectives on subjects such as creativity, education, ecology, and Indigenous rights.

Early life and education

While growing up on the Penticton Indian Reserve, Jeannette Armstrong received a formal education at a one-room school on the reserve as well as a traditional Okanagan education from her family and Elders (Armstrong, “Four Decades” xv and Voices). Armstrong’s customary education enabled her to learn the Okanagan language and she remains a fluent speaker of both Okanagan and English today. For many years since her childhood, Armstrong has studied traditional Okanagan teachings and practiced traditional ways under the direction of Elders (Armstrong, Creative 125).

Armstrong first discovered her talent for and attraction to writing at age fifteen when a poem she wrote on John F. Kennedy was published in a local newspaper (Voices). As a teenager, Armstrong continued to publish poetry and develop her literary voice by listening to and reading works by Aboriginal authors such as Pauline Johnson and Chief Dan George, who she identifies as her early influences (Armstrong, “Four Decades” xv).

In 1978, Armstrong received a diploma of Fine Arts from Okanagan College and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Victoria where she studied Creative Writing. Armstrong’s education establishes the basis for her multifarious work and accomplishments.

Armstrong as Educator

In 1978 Jeannette Armstrong began employment with the Penticton Band in a number of cultural and political capacities while also pursuing her work as a researcher, consultant, and writer at the En’owkin Centre (Lutz 13 and Petrone 140).

The En’owkin Centre, located on the Penticton Indian Reserve and operated exclusively by the six bands of the Okanagan Nation, is managed in conjunction with Okanagan College and the University of Victoria and aims to provide students with a strong cultural and academic foundation for success in further post-secondary studies (En’owkin and Petrone 140). The objectives of the society which governs En’owkin, as Armstrong describes, are “to record and perpetuate and promote ‘Native’ in the cultural sense, in education, and in our lives and our communities” (qtd in Lutz 27).

Read more at Wikipedia.org