Growing up in the ’90s in a white, lower middle class family, names like Tecumseh, Crazy Horse and Geronimo felt as familiar as Michael Jordan or Brad Pitt. My dad introduced me to Native American history through powwows, visits to Fort Ancient and movies like Dances With Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans. Only as an adult did I revisit that childhood fascination and recognize how problematic those cinematic depictions often were. It wasn’t until I began reading Native scholars and writers such as David Treuer, Philip J. Deloria, James Welch and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that I developed a deeper appreciation and understanding of Native American cultures.
Before attending the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Convergence in Cincinnati, I knew the concept of “survivance” only as a literary idea; a term used by certain Native writers to describe the endurance of Native identity through storytelling. But witnessing the weekend’s events brought that concept vividly to life.
Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor gave new meaning to the term survivance in 1993 with Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Vizenor defined survivance as an active presence and the continuance of Native stories — renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimhood. Survivance was certainly on display during the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Convergence, a celebration of Native identity and tradition held at various Cincinnati locations over the weekend of Oct. 10-13. Hosted by Urban Native Collective, the festival began on the evening of Oct. 10 at the Contemporary Arts Center, where Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape artist Leonard Harmon curated an eclectic exhibit of Indigenous art.
Native artists from diverse tribes across the United States displayed their work in the exhibit, each highlighting their own unique heritage and artistic vision. Two large portraits of Native women by Hoopa Valley Reservation painter Don Bailey, as well as a woven cap by Siletz/Yurok artist Chantele Rilatos, crafted from spruce roots and bear grass, were standout pieces. Delaware/Cherokee artist Holly Wilson also had several works on display, one of which, Spectrums Within Under Our Skin, consists of 144 small sculptures of girls in twelve colors of the rainbow, all made entirely of crayon. The piece explores the conflicting identities Wilson feels as both a Native and white person. As she wrote for the Volland Foundation:
“Growing up, I felt more times than I care to count that I was not enough of one or the other, and that pull made me question all parts of myself. If I did not look like ____ could I be ____? Where did I fit in if I was not a part of this or that group?”
After viewing the gallery, guests were entertained by DJ Creeping Bear and treated to traditional Indigenous food — cedar maple tea, buffalo meatballs, succotash and more — provided by the Indigenous Chef. The evening concluded with a performance by Copper Face United Powwow Dancers. Each dancer was introduced with a brief history of the dance and its meaning, such as the Omaha grass dance, in which the dancer mimics the fluid movements of prairie grass buffeted by the wind. Another, the Ojibwe jingle dress dance, featured small metal cones attached to the dancer’s dress, creating a rhythmic jingling sound as she moved to the thunderous drums and impassioned singing.
The following two days included an artist speaker series at the Aronoff Center and a traditional Chamoru basket-weaving class facilitated by Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco. Events like these feel especially meaningful in Ohio, a state where Native presence has long been written out of public memory.
Ohio is one of only fifteen states without a reservation, and many of us likely grew up far removed from our own Indigenous history, learning it, if at all, through conquest narratives like those popularized by Ohio writer Allan Eckert. Eckert authored the famous outdoor plays Tecumseh! — still produced in Chillicothe — and Blue Jacket, which ran from 1974 to 2010. Eckert infamously mixed fact with fiction, heightening the sense of drama in his historical narratives and endorsing the now-debunked myth that Blue Jacket was a white man raised as a Shawnee. A sense of finality pervades his best-known work, the seven-volume Winning of America series. Indeed, the seventh volume, Twilight of Empire, seems to suggest that Sauk chief Black Hawk represented the last gasp of Native resistance against the tide of American expansion. And in 1830, when the last of Ohio’s tribes – Shawnee, Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware, and Ottawa – were removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma and Kansas), a forced removal historian Mary Stockwell has called “the other Trail of Tears,” their history and memory seemed to vanish with them.
Of course, Native cultures have always thrived and will continue to do so, something historians today are quick to point out. Academic and historian Stephen Warren has written two histories of the Shawnee people, from pre-contact to post-removal, emphasizing how resilient they have been throughout history and how they have maintained their identity and traditions in spite of a nation that sought to erase them.
Perhaps one of the more pernicious myths in American history is that of the “Vanishing Indian,” a myth often endorsed by well-intentioned people who, having never met a “real Indian,” simply assume they no longer exist. This is why the Urban Native Collective provides such a vital corrective to that stereotype. Not only do Native people still exist, they continue to thrive and reinvent themselves within urban settings like Cincinnati.
That sense of community was palpable on the final day of the celebration, coinciding appropriately with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Held at Hoffner Park in Northside, the event invited the public to partake in a banquet of Indigenous food, enjoy another performance by Copper Face United, and even take home a piece of Native art, such as Navajo quilt wall décor or a Cherokee creation myth print. Looking around, one could see the wide variety of Native peoples and their singular contributions to American history. They gathered in a spirit of celebration and education, in a city that once pushed them out, and yet, for many, never stopped being home.
In that moment, the spirit of survivance was unmistakable; an active presence and living continuation of Native story and identity in the heart of Cincinnati.