With knowledge passed down through the millenia within her, Jeannette Armstrong has the ability to enchant an audience during her readings of poetry. The knowledge is more than just things she knows, it is how she carries and passes it down. With knowledge comes power and Jeannette carries it well. She is Okanagan from what is now known as Washington State and British Columbia. She is incredibly busy with her life’s work. Her priorities, she says, are her family and community. She teaches the Okanagan language and culture. She’s a traditional leader and works within the community. Her writing, she says, is “secondary.” With all that, she says that she is able to balance all of her priorities . “…I continue to be creative and make big contributions in my community.” I spoke with Jeannette during the Aboriginal Publishers’ Conference where she was one of the featured writers. She has many books to her credit. For more information contact Theytus Books at: RO. Box 20040, Penticton, B.C., V2A 8K3. Or phone: 604 493 7181.
The Nation: Are you offended when people ask you what tribe are you from? Jeannette Armstrong: No, I don’t like the idea of what tribalism might mean in the English context and the way it has been used by scholars, anthropologists, ethnographers, and principally what that term has meant in relation to our political understanding of ourselves as nations with a land base and government and language and societal structures.
I don’t take offense to the use of that word because it’s better than the word “Indian” in that “Indian” seems to be some kind of generic term for somebody who occupied North America. In my view, that word is very racist. In intent, it was constructed as a racist—through racist policy, the identification of the Indians and Europeans, and the policy making around those people rather than policy making around separate nations with separate land bases and separate cultural context So “tribe” somewhere in between Indian and nation is O.K.
Which part of Canada are you from? British Columbia.
So, if people ask who are you, what do you say I am…
Well, I’m not from any part of Canada actually. Canada sort of surrounds my territory, or likes to think it surrounds my territory. Geographically the area that my people occupy, the Okanagan, is both in Washington State, which is now part of the United States of America, and British Columbia, which is part of that economic apparatus called Canada.
Whenever I meet someone who is from a different part of I’ll say Canada, the first thing I generally ask is—I realize you do speak your language—the first thing I generally ask is do you speak the language, have you gone through the residential school system? No, I haven’t gone through the residential school system and none of my parents or grandparents have either. I am fortunate in that and my family is fortunate in that. And also my family is a resistance family and it was because of the severe resistance by my grandmother who in a very militant way defended our right to be who we are as Okanagan and our right to be educated by our own people, by our own Elders—that is not to be taken to residential school. I think that is one of the principal reasons why I am very strong and very clear in terms of defense of culture and the right for people to sustain and regain and recover.
Are you married? Yes, I am married now. I was divorced for a number of years and raised my two children as a single parent for many years. My first husband died, then a few years ago I remarried. And I find that in the context of my work the idea of, maybe it’s not just in writing, the idea of artistic voice and the creation of artistic voice and the work that is involved in that which takes me away from the home, has been a factor and I think it is a factor for indigenous women.
That continues to be there and continues to be an obstacle. I’m not saying I haven’t overcome it but it has been a factor that I have had really serious discussions about with my partner.
Is writing a political act for you? It has been. It has been a consciously political endeavor on my part. And I think that the artistic voice is engaged to create ways and means by which my thought can be transmitted to my audience who are my people. And through that as well to engage the non-Native audience in clearing up some of the stereotypes and speaking back to some of the lies.
So the resistance was always there from the beginning for you? You grew up with that? Um hum. I grew up with it in a family which, as I said, I was fortunate to be born into—a family which has always been resisting because they were very clearly understanding of the importance of the Okanagan culture and the Okanagan societal structure and the health of that and the relationship of its health to our family and ourselves as individuals.
And I remember very clearly the statements that my grandmother made and the statements my father made when we were small children and the dialogue that would take place in our language around the table. Her saying, “Learn as much as you can, be educated as much as you can, learn and understand as much as you can about the non-Native person. But never learn it from their view, always learn it and digest it understand it from being Okanagan, in our language. And you will see things about it that other people will miss because they don’t have your view, they don’t have what you have. Be able to speak about it in that way, whether it’s in English or in your own language. Always present through the looking glass of your view, your culture, your understanding of the world and how it should operate. And never compromise that Never compromise that for any reason.” So that’s deep resistance.
Is writing just a natural extension for the resistance from your family or did something click later on for you? No, writing was never something that I consciously intended or strived to do. But I do know that words have always been for me the centre to my communicative power and that I think has a lot to do with my own education and the Okanagan education. Many of my people within my family are traditional storytellers and in the Okanagan that means they are educators.
It means they are educating about history, about genealogy, about political science and educating about the medicines of the plant life, sciences and societal structures and interaction in society so that those storytellers and teachers I had were in terms of my own perspective giving me an understanding about how powerful words were and what the relationship of words is to those structures around us culturally. So in terms of writing, it was a natural progression to the written page and English.
This morning you talked about the whiteness of literature not as a racist but as a classist thing. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Sure, I studied history for a hobby. I read as much history as I can. I try to read it from as many different perspectives as possible. That’s reading of history from a view that isn’t thought about as a view of history. And reading through that format some insights are gained about what and how literature was constructed as a power tool to perpetuate and institute the class system and to maintain the value system and also to sustain the oppression around that value system in underprivileged classes.
So then you’re a writer—then at which point do those words become emancipators.
I think in a sense when we’re looking at the oppressed peoples, who are oppressed by classism and the structures that have been instituted to maintain the class structure, one of the things you can see is how words are used and how elitism plays a part in that.
Classical literature is a good example—what is defined as classical literature and what is accepted and given credit and therefore what is sold and marketed and pushed into the classrooms because it’s classified as literature regardless of the message or regardless of the undercurrent of poking fun and making a new mythology about a people.
So one of the things I have thought about myself is my responsibility in that. It is a two-pronged responsibility, my responsibility in actively creating voice and disseminating voice which sets straight some of the stereotypes and some of the outright lies that have been created.
So, you fight fire with fire? …so there’s a fine line there in terms of the carry-over into what gets printed of my word and my thinking.
Of course there is, like you mentioned, misogyny there. As a Native there is racism; there are problems associated with that. Has it been extra hard as a woman—because you are so strong—has that created problems for you? I have never really thought about it as a Native person. I can say, yes, I have been oppressed by the system and systematically racism includes oppression to women. The question though arises that in the last 20 years a large percentage of the published works have been by indigenous women, a larger percentage than indigenous men.
But one of the things I have come to understand is that it has a lot more to do with economics, economics at the community level rather than ability in terms of voice and articulation. When the economics started changing around publishing and creating voice in the written form, then a lot of men also appear on the scene. So no I haven’t been disadvantaged, I don’t think. I think I had the advantage because I was an indigenous woman to some degree.
So then there seems to be a lot of sacrifices to be made. It seems that if you want to fight, if you want to help your people or help your situation, it seems the sacrifices have to be made on a family level. Is it worth it for you? I think it’s probably in the way that one approaches their work. I have not agreed to sacrifice my family, I have not agreed to sacrifice my individual life and partnership and the enjoyment of life in that I have agreed to dedicate and to organize my time so I do not make those sacrifices. I have agreed that my family is my priority and the lifestyle I live in my community is a priority.
I do a lot of work in my community: I teach the Okanagan language and I’m involved and immersed in culture, and I’m a traditional leader and work with traditional people in my community continuously. That’s on-going, that’s my life.
Writing is secondary to that and my art, my artistic voice,
becomes secondary to the work I’m involved in and the activism and the writing. So if you combine all those things and manage your artistic voice so it works in with those things, that is a creative endeavor and accomplishment that I think I have achieved. I think I live a life that few people maybe have the ability to access and I continue to be creative and make big contributions in my community. I have not had to sacrifice my family and time with my family.
I do a lot of traveling, but I do a lot of quality living and playing with my family and a lot of quality teaching and maintain my presence in my family. To that degree I think when we talk about sacrifices I think it’s really a management of time and finding creative ways to not have to sacrifice either and therein lies the difficulty.
Have you seen any progress from the beginning, from when you started. Have you seen any progress in terms of the recognition of our rights and the attitudes of the government and society in general? I have seen progress and the progress has not been by mainstream society. It has been within our midst, in our communities, within our own people. Twenty years ago, a very small minority of our people started looking at traditions, reinstituting those traditions in a very real way in our family institutions and community institutions was very difficult.
Today, the incorporation of our customs and our traditions and the incorporation of our spirituality and cultural practice in our midst are everyday practices. The processes we use today in our decision-making and work together are reflective of that and I think that to me is a great step forward beyond the institutionalized politics of this government and its constitution. We haven’t made a lot of inroads there but I think inroads have been made in much more critical and more important areas in that those institutions will fall as a result and will be affected as a result and will be changed as a result.
What do you see for the future for the kids that are being born today? I have to admit I’m not optimistic. I find it very difficult to be optimistic in that I have travelled world-wide and I have seen the depth of oppression that is been created by the global economy and the globalization and the commodification of culture and commodification of thought and the conformity in terms of oppressing people culturally. The diversity of cultures starts to disintegrate and we end up with huge mono-cultures which is North American, Asian, whatever, and I think that to me is where my pessimism lies.
I have taken heart though in this kind of conference, in this kind of dialogue and in the creation of alternatives. An alternative approach to globalization so that maybe in the future, I’m not just talking about indigenous people, but I’m talking about humanity, so we can come to some conclusions around the necessity of diversity of culture and the strength that brings. Almost the same reason that bio-diversity is so necessary—if everybody starts thinking one way that’s a real danger because that’s the road to destruction, that’s clearly the road inherently somewhere along the line unless there are people there who can provide a counter-view and counterbalance.
We endanger ourselves in an incredible way—cultural diversity is obliterated. So my inspiration has been that there have been many alternative views that are arising. There’s a lot of support for that and today we have this meeting here which 20 years ago we did not have, we would not have. We would have a lot of people going to a non-Native publishers’ conference and get some kind of recognition for whatever they were publishing. But it’s the opposite today and that for me is reason to hope.
If you had a magic wand and you had one wish what would you do with it? I think probably the thing I would wish for right now is that anyone could speak their cultural language and suddenly everybody would be endowed with that whole view about the colonization and the history of it, the internalized racism that we suffer. That would be my wish and I think because of that the move toward publishing in our language from within that context, and certainly in English but from that meaning from that stance, this is where I would want to concentrate my work and my activism because that’s not possible at this point What do you try? There are a lot of young people who have problems with self-esteem for various reasons. What do you bring across to young people who are trying to find themselves or who are having problems in terms of relating to the universe? I work with a lot of young people in my community and also in the alternative schools I work with, that is the Okanagan alternative schools and these are culture-based schools. I guess the one way I have found is that I can work with young people—I’m talking about 12,13,15,16 year olds teenagers—the one thing we seem to be able to work well with together is the artistic media to find creative ways in which the thinking and the questioning, the process of inquiry which helps with identity, is brought to them through the production of artistic pieces, whether it’s in theater, whether it’s in video, whether it’s in writing, whether it’s in visual arts.
So it’s finding a way of expressing oneself in a nonself-destructive way? I guess it’s giving someone the tools to create expression and facilitating the creation of expression by the process of inquiry. They as an individual inquiring and finding ways to allow them to inquire through artistic expression. So that let’s say for instance I said to a group of students, “We’re going to learn about the problem of sexuality and how it might lead to unwanted children and economic chaos in your lives.” No one is going to want to talk about that, no one is going to get very excited about doing anything about that.
But I’m going to say we’re going to learn how to use this video machine and we’re going to learn how to create ways in which we can do little productions about your realities, your thinking, your ideas, what are the things you’re concerned about. And two out of three are going to talk about that topic. So I’m going to say O.K. Let’s recreate some of these dynamics. Let’s talk about role-playing and these issues, so we start doing script-writing and we start doing improv, we start performing acting, writing poems, songs and all those things. Lo and behold you end up with people who are talking about those issues and inquiring, asking each other and informing each other about those issues.
The process itself created that opportunity and created that inspiration and created a way to dialogue about that from their perspective. But it was the art, the creation of the art and the excitement about that and the imagination being inspired, that allowed that to happen.
Is there anything else you would like to add? I would say that creative voice—I’m not talking about the written voice but creative voice—is a way to bring out health to our people, whether it’s in the community or family or whether it’s within the individual. Because it is very empowering to have some control over something, to have something to say and be listened to and be heard.
That in itself is an empowering process, an empowering element in terms of the creation of artistic works, and so that artistic voice I think is one of the ways in which the health of our communities can very easily be supported, doesn’t require a lot of infrastructure. It doesn’t require a lot of money to assist creative voice to happen in a very informal communal setting. It happens and it’s very easy to support, very easy to solicit and very easy to bring to other communities. That’s one of the ways that I know language and culture are transmitted and values that are inherent in that language and culture are transmitted.
Thank you.
Good questions you have there!
