It was first employed in the context of Native American studies by the Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor, in his 1999 book Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance.
[3] Vizenor makes the term, which is deliberately imprecise, the cornerstone of his analysis of contemporary Native American literature, culture and politics.
The Cherokee-descent poet Diane Glancy demonstrates the ways that an imprecise term can inspire creativity by reconfiguring it: "Poetry is rebound.
[5] Karl Kroeber writes that Vizenor's "work aims to repair a peculiarly vicious consequence of genocidal attacks on native of the Americas: an inducing in them of their destroyers' view that they are mere survivors.
It is now also an interactive video game,[8] and is used in captions for the National Museum of the American Indian,[9] as well as being employed numerous times in titles of books and academic articles.