Jennifer Finley: A Tribal Councilor With a Yen to Write

By Todd Fuqua

Jennifer Finley (BS 96) traveled south from the Flathead Reservation in Montana to attend ENMU. “I picked Eastern because Portales had a McDonald’s,” Jennifer said. “I grew up in a town much smaller than Portales and was excited to live in a town with places to walk to. Portales had restaurants, places to buy shoes, and a movie theater.”

Courtesy Photo

Jennifer is now serving the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe (CSKT) as a tribal council representative. She’s also an accomplished writer, a discipline that fascinated her when she took a creative writing class with President Emerita Dr. Patrice Caldwell and world-renowned science fiction author Dr. Jack Williamson (MA 57, BA 57).

“I would not have become who I am without ENMU. I owe Dr. Caldwell and Dr. Williamson so much for their encouragement and support,” she said. “When I wrote my first poem, a whole universe opened to me, and things have never been the same. I felt like a mute person who heard my own voice for the first time.”

After graduating from ENMU, Jennifer earned a Master’s Degree in English from Northern Arizona University and moved back to Montana, where she worked as an English teacher and newspaper editor. She kept writing, eventually publishing her first work, the poetry collection “What I Keep,” which won her the North American Native Authors First Book Award in 1998. Since then, Jennifer has published many works and volumes. She won a Best Feature Writing Award from the Native American Journalists Association in 2001 and 2002, a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers in 2010, and the Menada Literary Award at the Ditet e Naimit International Poetry Festival in Macedonia in 2010. Her most recent poetry collection is “My Hands Have Vertigo,” published in 2017.

The Montana Office of Publication Instruction purchased copies of her 2011 book “Huckleberries, Buttercups, and Celebrations,” a children’s book about the Salish names for the months of the year, for every school library in the state.

In January 2022, Jennifer answered the call to serve her tribe and was elected a CSKT tribal councilwoman to a four-year term. She grew up on the Flathead Reservation, and also has Chippewa and Cree tribes in her ancestry. She is also a certified yoga instructor, a mother of three, and she still finds time to write, donating a copy of every book she publishes to the Golden Library at ENMU.

“So much has happened since I graduated, but ENMU is a magical, special place,” Jennifer said. “I will always cherish my time there.“