This essay addresses what has come to be known in the eld of Indigenous literary criticism as questions of hybridity and nationhood. In response to N. Scott Momaday’s 1970 essay “Man Made of Words,” in which he argues that “we are what we imagine,” Assiniwi asserts his right to nationhood based on sense of cultural belonging. Written in 1993, just three years after the Oka Crisis, which served to unite Indigenous peoples from across the continent, the essay takes the “pan-Native movement” one step fur- ther, and promotes tribal af liation as the key to Indigenous survival. In response to debates over “blood quantum” in the United States, Assiniwi asserts that action and experience rather than blood should determine nationhood. In spite of the French in his background, he is, as he declares, 100% Algonquin/Cree, and this is what defines him, and the literature that he produces (Ruffo & MacFarlane 77).
