| Summary: | "During early settlement times, some women of Syilx Okanagan descent, rather than being "between" two groups of men, were women who stood between two worlds, the expanding frontier world of the settler and the shrinking Indigenous world of the Syilx Okanagan people. Few Syilx Okanagan voices exist to counterbalance the overwhelming number of settler voices recounting those times. The voices of those Syilx women, whose own standing within the Syilx secured a privileged view from between the two worlds, offer us this unique glimpse into those times. Their lives, their voices, and their stories are gifts they have left to us. The focus of this essay is to draw on the historical writings, letters, memoirs, stories and literature of four Syilx women who lived during the early generations of settlement by non-Syilx in the Okanagan. The words and stories left by these women 5 provide glimpses into a sense of their own standing in the social and cultural distances being intersected, as well as reflect the growing disquiet between Syilx and settler. Standing as these women were between two societies, the unique views revealed in their writing provide a way to read those times beyond the primarily non-Syilx and male dominated views of history. The spaces occupied by these Okanagan women appear filled with a sense of striving to close the widening divide through engaging a deeper conversation between the Syilx and settler. The essay discusses the writing of two daughters of marriages between Syilx and settler and the stories of two Syilx women who each married into the settler society. The writing of the two women of Syilx descent through their mothers includes the memoirs and letters of Marie Houghton Brent, and a published historical autobiographical article by Eliza Jane Swalwell. We include and discuss the writings of Brent and Swalwell as examples of their views of those times from their position of standing between as daughters of Syilx and settler. Brent's observations and opinions not only bring forward a glimpse into her own life, but also reflect her stance on the tensions of those times between settler and Syilx. In "Girlhood Days in the Okanagan," Swalwell provides us not only with a personal historical view of her times, but also, like Brent, a view of her position between the two cultures. The writing of these daughters of Syilx and settler, although told and published in English, also provide examples of the Syilx oral narrative style used to pass on historical story."--
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