Jeannette Armstrong
Jeannette Armstrong was born in 1948 on the Okanagan Reserve in British Columbia. She received a Diploma of Fine Arts from Okanagan College and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria. Armstrong's main goal in writing is to educate young people about Native culture and history. She is the director of the En'owkin Center, a cultural and educational organization operated by the Okanagan Nation. In 1989 she helped to found the En'owkin School of International Writing, which is the first credit-giving creative writing program in Canada to be managed and operated expressly by and for Native people.
Books (3)
Synopsis:
Native Poetry in Canada: A Contemporary Anthology is the only collection of its kind. It brings together the poetry of many authors whose work has not previously been published in book form alongside that of critically-acclaimed poets, thus offering a record of Native cultural revival as it emerged through poetry from the 1960s to the present. The poets included here adapt English oratory and, above all, a sense of play. Native Poetry in Canada suggests both a history of struggle to be heard and the wealth of Native cultures in Canada today.
Reviews
“This collection shows the breadth of contemporary Native poetry, from the resistance literature of the many poems remembering the murdered Helen Betty Osborne to the playful fishing game of Daniel David Moses; it is an excellent anthology.” — Terry Goldie, York University, co-editor of An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English
“Armstrong and Grauer have arranged a collection of works of extraordinary breadth in their thematic treatment of cultural, political, and spiritual subjects. Instructors will value the accompanying biographical information, the substantial selections from each poet’s work, and the authors’ prefatory comments, all of which situate this collection as an ideal text for the university classroom.” — Canadian Literature
Additional Information
360 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
The writing and relations between Syilx women and settler women, largely of European descent, who came to inhabit the British Columbia southern interior from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
Educator Information
Okanagan Women’s Voices features the writing and stories of seven women: Susan Moir Allison (1845-1937), Josephine Shuttleworth (1866-1950), Eliza Jane Swalwell (1868-1944), Marie Houghton Brent (1870-1968), Hester Emily White (1877-1963), Mourning Dove (1886-1936) and Isabel Christie MacNaughton (1915-2003).
Additional Information
6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
An expression of the people, culture, ceremony and songs along the Fraser, River of Salmon Peoples captures what the Fraser River, and its most valuable resource, the salmon, means to First Nations communities along its basin. The result of nine community engagements, extensive research over two years, and illuminating photographs and artwork, this book includes the oral narratives of each community along the river. While capturing timeless Indigenous stories and legends about the salmon and the river, this book is also an exploration of the future of the salmon and waters of the Fraser River.
Authenticity Note: After a team of researchers gathered a wealth of information from and about the indigenous cultures along the Fraser River, Jeannette Armstrong and Gerry William co-edited River of Salmon Peoples.