Red Men in Red Square: Chief Big Eagle Visits the Soviet Union - Hardcover

Claude Clayton Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0936015470 ISBN 13: 9780936015477

Publisher: Pocahontas Press, 1994

Synopsis

In the summers of 1990 and 1991 a traditional Indian chief, Chief Big Eagle of the Golden Hill Indian Reservation in Trumbull, Connecticut, visited Moscow and Leningrad.

'Each summer...near Leningrad an American Indian camp appears with teepees, a totem pole, and people dressed as they were when American was discovered.'

About this title

About the Author

Claude Clayton Smith, who grew up in Stratford, Connecticut, recently retired as Professor of English from Ohio Northern University. The author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays, he is co-editor and translator of The Way of Kingship, the world's first anthology of Native Siberian literature in English. For his writing on native people both at home and abroad, he was awarded a gold medal authorized by the United Nations committee responsible for the 'International Decade of Indigenous Peoples -- 1994-2004.' His books have been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese.

'Bud,' as he is known to family and friends, holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Yale, a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, and a Doctor of Arts from Carnegie-Mellon. He lives with his wife Elaine in Ada, Ohio. They have two sons and an 'empty nest.'

From Publishers Weekly

Choppy prose and a self-conscious, subjective mixture of reportage and political analysis undermine a potentially intriguing examination of the Russian Indianist movement, a small group devoted to learning about, learning from and preserving Native American culture. In the summers of 1990 and 1991, against a background of Communist bureaucracy and economic and political turmoil, Smith traveled to the Soviet Union with Chief Big Eagle of Connecticut's Paugussett Indian Nation. Chief Big Eagle, the star of Smith's earlier Quarter-Acre of Heartache and supposedly the book's drawing card, is in fact a drawback. At worst, he comes across as impatient, demanding, infantile and paranoid, as when he arrives at the 11th annual all-Union powwow in 1991 saying `` `Where the hell are the teepees! . . . They're trying to kill me, just like last summer.' '' At best, he seems materially naive, relentless in his demands for a fur hat and coat or cigarettes. When not portraying the Chief, Smith records his interviews with Russians on their reasons for adopting the Native American philosophy and way of life as well as their opinions on their own state. Lacking either close personal contact or concrete scholarly research, Smith's record fails as either memoir or social document.

Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocahontas Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0936015470
• ISBN 13: 9780936015477
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336