Health inequity scholars, particularly those engaged with questions of structural and systemic racism, are increasingly vocal about the limitations of “resilience.” This is true for Indigenous health scholars, who have pushed back against resilience as a descriptor of modern Indigeneity and who are increasingly using the term survivance. Given the growing frequency of survivance in relation to health, we performed a scoping review to understand how survivance is being applied in health scholarship, with a particular interest in its relationship to resilience. Results from 32 papers indicate that health scholars are employing survivance in relation to narrative, temporality, community, decolonization, and sovereignty, with varying degrees of adherence to the term’s original conception. Overwhelmingly, authors employed survivance in relation to historical trauma, leading us to propose the analogy: as resilience is to trauma, so survivance is to historical trauma. There may be value in further operationalizing survivance for health research and practice through the development of a unified definition and measurement tool, ensuring comparability across studies and supporting future strengths-based Indigenous health research and practice.

The Late Holocene Dry Period (LHDP) was a one-plus millennial megadrought (3100–1800 cal BP) that delivered challenges and windfalls to Indigenous communities of the central Great Basin (United States). New pollen and sedimentation rate studies, combined with existing tree-ring data, submerged stump ages, and lake-level evidence, demonstrate that the LHDP was the driest Great Basin climate within the last 6,000 years—more extreme than the well-known Medieval Climatic Anomaly. New evidence reported here documents that most Great Basin archaeological sites south of 40° N latitude were abandoned during the long dry phase of the LHDP (3100–2200 cal BP), sometimes reoccupied during a wet interval (2200–2000 cal BP), and abandoned again during the most extreme drought (2000–1800 cal BP). Even in the face of epic drought, this is a story of remarkable survivance by some people who adjusted to their drought-stricken landscape where they had lived for millennia. Some moved on, but other resilient foragers refused to abandon their homeland, taking advantage of glacier-fed mountain springs with cooler alpine temperatures and greater moisture retention at high altitude, a result of early Neoglaciation conditions across many Great Basin ranges, despite epic drought conditions in the lowlands.

Survivorship of patients placed into long-term care facilities within the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth was studied over a seven-year period from 1980 to 1987. All patients had been assessed prior to placement by the Placement and Coordination Service and their computer files served as the data base for this study. Over the seven years, 25 per cent of patients died in each of nursing homes, homes for the aged and lodging homes and over 50 per cent of patients died after being placed in chronic care hospitals. Approximately 10 per cent of the deaths occurred in the first year after placement in the lodging homes, homes for the aged and nursing homes, whereas 25 per cent died in this time in chronic care beds. Survivorship rates of all patients combined differed significantly for males compared with females, but were not significantly different for variables such as age at time of placement, marital status, ambulation, living arrangement, previous location of community versus institutions, and agreement between recommended and final placement. Client's memory at time of placement was associated with survivorship in a nursing home: males with “no recall” and females with “marked confusion” and “no recall” survived longer than those with “normal” memory.

Nineteen accessions from seven Lycopersicon species were bioassayed for their resistance to Heliothis armigera (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in laboratory tests at 29 ± 1°C and 65 ± 2% r.h. Data on larval developmental duration (days), survival (%) and pupal weights (mg) revealed that maximum resistance to H. armigera occurred in accessions of L. hirsutum f. glabratum and L. hirsutum. When the larvae were fed on the foliage of PI 134417 and PI 126449 accessions (L. hirsutum f. glabratum), the developmental time was longer, and survival rate and pupal weights were lower than when the larvae were fed on cultivars of L. esculentum. Rearing of H. armigera larvae through third instar is sufficient to evaluate the resistance of wild tomato foliage since most of the larval mortality occurs prior to this stage. Accessions of L. peruvianum, L. chilense, L. cheesmanii and L. pimpinellifolium proved less resistant than L. hirsutum f. glabratum and L. hirsutum but significantly more resistant than L. esculentum. Thus, among the various Lycopersicon spp. bioassayed, accessions of L. hirsutum f. glabratum seem to have most potential for breeding H. armigera resistant cultivars.

The effects of various exposure to irradiation from cesium 137 in nitrogen and air on survival and fecundity of Glossina palpalis palpalis were compared. With doses from 3 to 21 krad in nitrogen atmosphere, male fertility was inversely correlated with dose, above 15 krad male survival was inversely correlated with dose. All males subjected to either 21 krad in nitrogen or 15 krad in air were sterilized. Females appeared to be more sensitive to gamma-irradiation than males; a dose of 6 krad in nitrogen resulted in 100% sterility and arrested further development of the ovaries after the ovulation of follicles A1 and C1. In males, this dose caused 70.3% sterility. Approximately 97 and 98% sterility were obtained when males were treated with 15 krad in nitrogen and 12 krad in air respectively. No fly emerged from irradiated puparia younger than 15 days. Irradiation of 15 or 20 days old puparia killed the insect either before or shortly after eclosion, whereas the normal patterns of emergence, survival and reproduction were observed from puparia that were irradiated when 25 days old or older.

Field studies revealed the nettle caterpillar, Latoia ( = Parasa) viridissima, to be multivoltine with four discrete generations a year. The maximum egg (1800/100 fronds) and larval (1500/100 fronds) densities were attained in April/May 1980. The pupal population was generally low; the highest recorded density of 54/100 fronds was attained in March 1980 during the first generation.

Samples of larvae and pupae from the field were attacked by parasitoids in the families Bombyliidae, Braconidae, Chalcididae, Chrysididae, Eulophidae, Ichneumonidae and Tachinidae. These contributed to mortalities ranging from 6 to 30%, but their combined action with microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) accounted for 28–65% mortality of the insect.