Pasīpahkīhnen: Stories of Survivance

Abstract

These panels share stories from within an hour’s drive of Stevens Point. As white settlement transformed the landscape, native people defied demands that they leave. They established places to live, ways of making a living, and connections with one another. To convey such experiences, the Ojibwe scholar Gerald Vizenor uses the term “survivance.” Familiar tellings of Native American history often dwell on tragedy, victimhood, or bare survival. Instead, Vizenor and others call for attention to Indigenous peoples’ “active presence in the world now.” The people described here remained actively present where they were not supposed to be. Their descendants remain actively present today.