I’m going to start by expressing my ideas here the way I do when I give talks, so if you’ve heard me do this bit and it bothered you– get ready to wade through it again. Sorry to trigger warn, but I really get tired of people who come out swinging at me over this not being how “they” understood the term. My whole effort here is to reclaim and rework. That’s sort of what I do. I think that’s what every scholar should do on some level. If we’re just porting other people’s ideas around, what is the real point of our work? That’s not to say I don’t respect a good Marxist reading of something new, or a good “how would Foucault view” article, but in reality I find it a little myopic to just say “okay, this person wrote this thing with this theory, and I can do the exact same thing they did to this thing.” Part of my reaction to that might be from numerous people telling me that’s what I should do, mind you. I’m big on living and letting live, but when people start talking down their nose at me about my research simply because I might have chosen to expand on a concept in a way they personally wouldn’t have, I get defensive. So tl;dr one of the few things I will actually get in your face about is if you try to tell me how to practice thinking. That’s the ultimate thoughtless colonization. To claim you have the right to police how ideas are used is the height of arrogance. I also think it’s the height of irony when someone tells me that in their opinion my opinion is wrong, ergo I should change my opinion. No value judgment there, right?
I mean if you want to understand a truly Indigenous rhetoric, that’s what you have to grasp. Ownership was different for us. Tool use is different for us. Of course we aren’t going to treat someone’s ideas as a monolith, as inflexible. We’re going to tinker with what we see that we think works. That’s how we’ve survived. So consider how biased and colonizing you’re being when you criticize someone for doing something that isn’t white but which follows a strong cultural logic. Also– don’t be afraid to entertain a new point-of-view. It’ll make you smarter, even if you disagree with the idea and think the author put it together haphazardly. There’s not really any risk in giving an argument a chance.
Now, then, survivance. The word comes from legal terminology originally (meaning “to have longevity”), but it came to the world of theory and English studies in the work of Derrida, who used it to define a state of being that was not-alive-but-not-dead (sort of a ghost existence). You can learn all of that from Wikipedia if you don’t believe me. The term became something used by Native scholars in Gerald Vizenor’s work. His definition builds that survivance is the action of — to use part of a term to define it– surviving instead of fading into history, of living traditions and cultural practices instead of succumbing to what American society has done to Native cultures, or what many of us refer to as being made into museum exhibits. To put it bluntly, I’m not Cherokee in the way my ancestors were because we’re not in that world, but I haven’t finished being Cherokee, nor have all the other Cherokee. Andrew Jackson’s genocide failed to eradicate Native people, so we’re not in the rear view mirror.
Some argue that survivance is the combination of “survival + resistance,” and others claim it is the combination of “survival + vitality or essence.” I don’t think either of those is wrong, precisely, but I never saw it quite the same way. I think of it as this: survival + subsistence. I think the act of survivance can be viewed as resistance, but only in so much as surviving anything you weren’t meant to survive is an act of resistance.
So why do I claim survival + subsistence? Because that’s where Indigenous people in the Americas– Natives– are. To subsist is akin to survival, but it’s not a flourishing, glorious survival. It’s getting by. And that’s the life that Natives live, particularly that Native scholars live. We are often expected to speak for all Natives– for all “American Indians” for all “NDNs”– but we are also expected to look like our ancestors of the past and to act like them. Ironically no other culture in America is treated this way. We don’t expect white men to wear coon skin caps and carry fifes. Fives? Fifesteses? We don’t expect African Americans to wear the clothing of the African tribal ancestors that allowed them to be sold (or sold them) into slavery. We don’t expect any of the numerous Asian American cultures to dress in their traditional historic dress. Just Indians. I should have feathers on my head (pro tip: Cherokee never did that, though we did wear war paint, but it meant we were going to war, so we wouldn’t just slather it on to go out to shop or something).
So we subsist. I remember how proud I was of fellow Cherokee Elizabeth Warren when her detractors accidentally gave her the two word battle-cry of “she persisted.” That’s how I hope to be remembered myself, at my best. I want to be remembered as the kind-hearted wolf that tried to nurture a pack that wasn’t really his own, but who showed his teeth enough to remind people when they were wrong. I want to slay dragons, but I want people to know it was the black sheep (the wolf black sheep wolfsheep?) what ran the beast through with a sword. Because that’s what survivance means to me.
We’re still here, and while there are very few of us and we are rarely afforded the protections that our cultures rightfully deserve (that all other cultures are afforded), we’re not going to cry about it. We’re not going away, though.
And that is why we can be kind, and be cooperative, and think the best of everyone and act in the best interest of the community but still snarl. I had a mentor in graduate school who just so happened to do her PhD work at the university where I work now (if you want to figure out who it is you can easily Google and piece it together, but I’m not going to name-drop here out of respect). When I started work here, I was told to stay clear of that scholar as the scholar was bad news and was always angry and picking fights.
That is the person who was central to the fight to remove the Redskin mascot here.
That person has no choice but to react with some venom, to be a little loud, because if that person didn’t make noise, no one would notice. It is not our way, culturally, to be combative and angry and loud. This is what being forced to play by someone else’s rules does to a culture.
But we don’t want to be your nostalgia trip. We don’t want to be your museum exhibit.
Look! It’s a Cherokee!
Wait, he doesn’t look very Cherokee. He looks like a fat white dude.
And he teaches video games and digital culture?
Yeah. I also love teaching with comic books and film. Of course people assume I’m white. I do white-guy stuff. But that’s because as white guys you stole all the stuff, so I have to fight to claim anything you didn’t deem “native” is truly mine. It’s exhausting, and it’s something that if you’re a white person you’ll never understand. I don’t blame you. But don’t pretend you “get” it. Sometimes –often, really–I get treated as white. But I’m not. So the status that goes to a white male doesn’t apply to me. And I can’t understand exactly how that would feel. Just as a white man can’t understand how it feels to be one of 3 Native American faculty members at a relativelyt large university.
And I don’t want to labor it all the time, because I know that when I talk about how awful American colonists were to my people I am talking about the past, and I know that makes people now uncomfortable and defensive. I know that none of you did those things. I’m not accusing you or blaming you. But what I don’t want is to be someone who lets you erase those things. I will try not to bring it up all the time, but you have to promise me to remember. No trail of tears jokes. No “I don’t know any Indians who are upset about the Redskins logo.”
To truly enact survivance is to be the memorial you didn’t want. No, I won’t be a walking museum piece. But I am just fine if I’m a walking reminder that people like me were done wrong. But you know what? Just like Elizabeth Warren…
We persisted.
And a secret for you: that’s really all we want. We don’t want reparations or the country back or to shame the majority into feeling bad. We just want the right to exist and to be considered in conversations. We want people to remember that we’re here. And we want to not be treated like the suffering of our ancestors, or the institutional racism that we face, isn’t real. Stop pretending Thanksgiving was a glorious party where our people came together and admit, as hard as it is, that the first Thanksgiving was a slaughter. Know your past.
I don’t blame anyone who is alive now for any of it. But as I’ve said before, I don’t consider ignorance an excuse. You can learn. You should learn. I learned your history.
You need to know our story, as the national origin you sing in great glory is written in the ashes and blood of my ancestors.