Notes on Contemporary Indian Identity

Abstract

This essay offers a survey of Native American positions in the American patchwork. Taking as a starting point contemporary American politics and the possibility of multiracial identification in the U.S. Census, it surveys the contemporary discussion by Native American writers and scholars on “Men made of words,” “postindians,” “paracolonialism,” invented Indians, real Indians, and Indians as “signatures of assent,” foregrounding the complex negotiations involved in definitions and self-definitions of Indian identity.