Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🌱 Continued existence 📜 Inheritance rights 🪶 Cultural resistance
survivance

survivance

9.9
Keeping a people's culture and language alive despite attempts to end them
  • noun
  • /sərˈvaɪvəns/
  • Formal
translation icon : supervivencia cultural
  • Our peoples center on Native peoples' experiences resulting from European contact, highlighting survivance strategies in the face of colonizing forces.
  • native survivance
  • stories of survivance

Examples

  • One cannot appreciate and experience the power of Native survivance if the stories and memories of our histories are not placed within the context of struggle.

    Academic text (2006)

  • Vizenor uses the neologism "survivance" to suggest the process of survival embedded in the daily narrative acts of personal identity.

    Academic text (1996)

  • What we are talking about in the end is cultural survivance.

    Academic text (2006)

  • The future of Quebecois survivance outside the province is less clear.

    Academic text (2000)

  • Clearly, his autobiographical stories are native survivance, not victimry.

    Academic text (2006)

  • Along the lines of positive Native identity construction, the HBNMP focuses on the survivance and autonomy of the Red Sticks.

    Academic text (2009)

  • Survivance shimmers here in the Crow style of openly inviting and adopting others into their ways.

    Academic text (1996)

  • Nicknames, shadows, and shamanic visions are tribal stories that are heard and remembered as survivance.

    Academic text (1996)

  • Cultural survivance is essential for maintaining traditions and practices in the face of colonization.

  • The HBNMP emphasizes the importance of survivance in preserving the identity of Indigenous peoples.

Synonyms

survival
vssurvivance
577 3.0

To keep living in difficult conditions

is about active cultural presence, practice, and resistance under oppression

Antonyms

suppression
57 6.1

Stopping people from expressing opinions or practising traditions by force

assimilation
19 5.7

People adopting the customs and way of life of a larger group

How Persistent

survivance
  • Formal
9.9
resilience
52 4.8
continuance
30 5.7
presence
951 2.1
remnant
104 4.2

Surface Forms

survivance singular
survivances plural

Morphology

survivance = survive (semi-transparent) = survive + ance

Formally derived from 'survive' + '-ance', but used in cultural and postcolonial contexts to mean active presence and resistance, a nuanced sense beyond simple survival.

Etymology

Survivance comes from Latin parts super- 'over' and vivere 'to live', the same root as survive and survivor. For communities and cultures it means staying present and keeping traditions and language alive despite colonization or hard times, so their culture 'lives on' through practice and resistance.