Reviewed is X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent by Scott Richard Lyons.

Tracing her own efforts to assert her Cherokee ancestry, the author considers what is at stake for the more than four million mixed-bloods in the United States and suggests that individual nations must find some way to acknowledge those who wish to claim their heritage. She argues that finding a way to accept unenrolled mixed-blood peoples will allow indigenous nations to accrue greater political and cultural power in this country.

blood American Indians/Alaskan Natives, while just over four million designate their racial identity as mixed-blood.2 In my home state of North Carolina, records indicate that fewer than 100,000 people are full-blood American Indians/Alaskan Natives, while over 130,000 people are mixed-bloods. Russell Thornton suggests that the substantial increase in the Native American population since the turn of the twentieth century is due to several factors, including increased life expectancies, higher fertility and birth rates, and decreased stigmatizing of people of mixed ancestry who admit such status. I am one of the mixed-bloods who comes from a background where people attempted to hide their origins (see Bizzaro). My family's effort to avoid being jailed for evading the evacuation of the Cherokee led them to hide in the mountains of Georgia and deny their heritage in an effort to blend into the dominant culture.

This article compares entrance-to-the-profession narratives of the past thirty years. Selecting major theorists and senior and junior minority scholars, the author describes their efforts to become professionals in the field. The Native American author argues for including Other voices in analyzing the history of composition studies.