Dovie Thomason, of Lakota, Apache, and Scot Traveller descent, draws on her mixed background in her work. In the four decades of her life’s work with Storying, she has been inspired by Gerald Vizenor’s (Anishnaabe) words:
“Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories…”.
It has led her from the retelling of stories first heard from her grandmother, and then other elder tellers from her own and other indigenous nations—the “preservation” of cultural stories—to the “continuance” through cultural stories speaking to contemporary listeners and issues. These original stories are the braidings of traditional teachings, unspoken stories, family stories of relatives and relationships, erased histories and future imaginings.