X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent (review)

For Scott Lyons, the questions surrounding Indian identity, culture, and nationalism are mired in the conflicts between traditionalists and what he identifies as modernists. Lyons is not against tradition per se; much of his book is shaped by his own Ojibwe traditions and language. Rather, he is against a sense of tradition that is immutable and bound to a set of rules with no room for growth. He fears the growing trend to idolize the past at the cost of the benefits offered by the modern world—the trend to see all things western as evil versus a consistently good Native (or Nativist) position. In X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent, Lyons sees change at the crux of Native traditions, and suggests that those who believe that change necessarily equals a loss of tradition have, ironically, been influenced by western ideologies that have constructed Indians and Indian traditions in ways useful to the West. For Lyons, the modern world should be taken advantage of rather than spurned. This concept is at the heart of what he identifies as the "x-mark." While he is not naïve about the impact of treaty history on Native peoples, he argues that the Natives who made their x-marks did so in the belief that it could yield a positive result. Taking the metaphor into the modern world, he uses "the x-mark to symbolize Native assent to things . . . that, while not necessarily traditional in origin, can sometimes turn out all right and occasionally even good" (3). Using his own Ojibwe people's history of migrations to newer (and hopefully better) places, Lyons identifies the x-mark as a decision made in the hope of positive change—a continued migration and movement forward.

In Chapter One, "Identity Crisis," Lyons opens with a story about his daughter, who was called a "white girl" as an adolescent by a Native boy at a powwow. The girl, who had just participated in an Ojibwe language-immersion course, dressed down the boy in their own language—a language the boy did not speak. The questions at the core of this story are the same ones that have been at the heart of the Native world for years: Who decides the rules for Indian identity? And what does it mean to be Indian? In answering these questions, Lyons identifies the fractures within the Indian community that have led to inclusions, exclusions, disenrollments, banishments, and even "ethnic cleansing" (44) among and by Native peoples. While Lyons later asserts that defining citizenship is an essential part of nationhood, he questions practices that, while rooted in traditional definitions of Indianness, are essentially influenced by colonialist policies. At the center of questions surrounding Indian identity is the difference between "being" Indian and "doing" Indian. Using Ojibwemowin, he argues for an understanding of Indian identity that stems from "culture, ethnicity, language, and allegiance—and not blood, breeding, or biology—as the determination of Indian identity and difference" (56). Integral here, and throughout the rest of the book, is the concept of inclusion rather than exclusion.

Similarly, in Chapter Two, "Culture and Its Cops," Lyons argues that culture, like identity, cannot be rigidly defined. Beginning with a linguistic examination of the root words of culture, the Latin words natura, "signifying the process of birth," and colere, whose "dominant meaning . . . was to nurture" (77), Lyons argues that historically, the idea of culture was something someone did rather than something someone was. Only in recent generations did culture became a noun—a noun that sparked culture wars, because so many people today see cultures "as discrete, coherent, and ultimately conflicting entities" (82). But for Lyons, culture is not a discrete entity. Rather, there are myriad ways to "do" culture—even within the bounds of a particular culture. Returning once again to Ojibwemowin, Lyons illustrates that there is no singular word in the language for culture. Instead, because Ojibwemowin (like many other Native languages) is verb-based...