One has to admire Circe Sturm's courage to undertake what is undeniably the most volatile and sensitive issue in American Indian communities today. An anthropologist, Sturm conducted her fieldwork in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, where she solicited tribal members to speak about how identity politics work within the Cherokee Nation. To outsiders, “Cherokee” must seem a simple term, but Sturm shows that it is multitudinously complex. Cherokees whom Sturm talked to or heard others talk about were often categorized under rubrics denoting family heritage or phenotype (“white-Cherokees,” “full-bloods,” “mixed-bloods,” “black freedmen”). But as Sturm learned, these genealogical and racial labels simultaneously serve as metaphors describing how people behave and live.