Okanagan Women’s Voices presents the interconnected voices and perspectives of seven women, the majority having Settler ancestry, with others having First Nations lineage. This collection of memoirs, letters, newspaper articles, and poetry offers insight into the colonial history and cultures of the Syílx Peoples. Through observations, reflections, and the building of intimate relationships over time, these women developed understandings and perspectives regarding inequities for First Peoples during European settlement within south-central British Columbia. Some of these women passed on Syílx Teachings through the written sharing of captikʷł, Traditional Stories that explain the laws, governance, values, and principles that guide their behaviours and responsibilities to each other and the lands. The editors weave in information about the contributors and the time period throughout the book. Included at the beginning of this book is a map of the territory these women lived within, marked with traditional Syílx and contemporary names of places.

Cautions / Content Warnings: Contains some dated terms considered offensive today (due to the time period of writings).
Other End Matter: footnotes
Images: b&w photographs
Contributor Affiliation: Author Jeanette Armstrong (Syílx), Editors Lally Grauer, Janet MacArthur
Bibliography: Yes
Index: Yes

Source: Books BC - BC Books for Schools & Indigenous Books for Schools

Jeannette Armstrong is an award-winning novelist, activist and poet born on the Okanagan Reserve. Known for her literary work, Armstrong has always sought to change deeply biased misconceptions about Indigenous people. Her novel Slash is considered by many people to be the first novel by a First Nations woman. In 2013 she was appointed a Canada Research Chair in Okanagan Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophy to research, document, categorize and analyze Okanagan syilx oral literature in Nsyilxcn.

Jeannette Armstrong's profile page

Lally Grauer has long been involved in Canadian and Indigenous literatures and oratures in Canada. During her graduate studies at the University of Toronto she gathered and analyzed writings from the Riel Rebellion of 1885 (“In the Camp of Big Bear”). As an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan she taught both Canadian and Indigenous literatures. Together with Jeannette Armstrong, she published Native Poetry in Canada (2001) and has collaborated with Indigenous authors in papers and articles.

 

Lally Grauer's profile page

Janet MacArthur is an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus). She created and taught the first courses there on women’s literature, autobiography, and trauma studies in the humanities. She has published a monograph on the reception of early modern poetry as well as articles on women’s literature, postcolonial literature, settler colonial life writing, and disability narratives. Recent conference presentations have been on relations among Syilx, mixed heritage, and settler women in the southern interior, and on Holocaust film and fiction.

 

Janet MacArthur's profile page

“Okanagan Women’s Voices allowed me to learn the stories while literally travelling the pathways of the Syilx and settler writers, thereby deepening my connection to this place through time.”

Kerrie Charnley, BC Studies

“A contact zone dominated by white men and popularly represented by cowboys, railway builders and gold miners is here illuminated by seven women writers­–some Syilx, some settler. They experienced intimate friendships and family relations across an increasingly high racial bar, and thought through their cultural entanglements in poetry, Syilx captikwl, memoir, letters, newspaper articles and history. Expertly contextualized, their writings give a gendered and often surprisingly original picture of the period when settler racism forced the Syilx from their territory. ”

Margery Fee, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Professor Emerita of English, University of British Columbia

“Okanagan’s Women’s Voices is best viewed as an anthology rather than as a single master narrative intended to be read in “one go.”…Okanagan’s Women’s Voices is a welcome book and a rich resource for any student, researcher, or writer of the Okanagan Valley’s people.”

The British Columbia Review