X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent

Description

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, North American Indian leaders commonly signed treaties with the European powers and the American and Canadian governments with an X, signifying their presence and assent to the terms. These x-marks indicated coercion (because the treaties were made under unfair conditions), resistance (because they were often met with protest), and acquiescence (to both a European modernity and the end of a particular moment of Indian history and identity). In X-Marks, Scott Richard Lyons explores the complexity of contemporary Indian identity and current debates among Indians about traditionalism, nationalism, and tribalism.

Scott Richard Lyons (Ojibwe/Dakota) is assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, where he teaches indigenous and American literatures. He has also taught at Leech Lake Tribal College, the University of North Dakota, and Concordia College, Moorhead. The author of numerous critical and scholarly essays (including "Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?"), he is also a personal essayist and frequent contributor to newspapers such as Indian Country Today and Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul). He has worked with grassroots organizations on issues ranging from Ojibwe language revitalization to Native theater.