Jeannette Armstrong

Jeannette Christine Armstrong OC (Okanagan: lax̌lax̌tkʷ; born 1948) is a Canadian author, educator, artist, and activist. She was born and grew up on the Penticton Indian reserve in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, and fluently speaks both the Syilx and English languages.^[1] Armstrong has lived on the Penticton Native Reserve for most of her life and has raised her two children there.^[2] In 2013, she was appointed Canada Research Chair in Okanagan Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophy at the University of British Columbia.^[3][4]

Armstrong's 1985 work Slash is considered the first novel by a First Nations woman in Canada.^[5][6]

Armstrong is Syilx Okanagan. Her mother, Lilly Louie, was from Kettle Falls and belonged to the Kettle River people, and Armstrong's father belonged to the mountain people who lived in the Okanagan Valley. As an Okanagan person, the land is intrinsically part of her identity, and she is deeply connected to the land she and her relatives were raised on.^[7] Her paternal grandfather, Thomas James Armstrong was the Irish husband of her paternal grandmother Christine Joseph. Armstrong's maternal great-grandmother was Theresa Quintasket, paternal aunt of Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket). In the Okanagan kinship system Quintasket was a cousin-aunt to Armstrong's mother Lilly Louie (Quintasket was first cousin to Armstrong's maternal grandfather). In the Okanagan kinship system she would be recognized as Armstrong's grand-aunt (the same word in Okanagan). Armstrong identified strongly with the book "Cogewea, the Half-Blood," written by Mourning Dove, one of the earliest Native American women novelists in the United States. Controversy has arisen as a result of misunderstandings about her claim of this Okanagan recognized relationship to Christine Quintasket aka Mourning Dove.^[6][8] Armstrong is best known for her involvement with the En'owkin Centre and writing. She has written about topics such as creativity, education, ecology, and Indigenous rights.