Margaret Manuel was born in Kamloops, British Columbia and was raised in Merritt, BC. She is of Okanagan and Shuswap ancestry and comes from a family of traditional knowledge keepers. Along with her siblings, she was taught the Okanagan language, while she is still not fluent she continues to struggle with her grasp of the language her people speak. It is with this fight to retain the little that she knows and her willingness to keep the flame burning that she continues her journey toward fluency in her native tongue. A mother of two, she also tries to teach and encourage her children to follow in her footsteps.