“Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.” Like Santiago X, Vizenor looks to an indigenous future full of living cultures that are always transforming. We may not know exactly what Cahokia meant to the people who lived there, but their traditions thrive in revitalized communities, reconfigured in the wake of the political disaster that was European colonialism. As Roanhorse and other indigenous artists have pointed out, tribal cultures
...more
