Talk:Chief Red Fox

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Hello to living relatives of Chief Red Fox. I believe that toward the end of his career he went to schools and gave presentations about the real life and customs of American Indians. He came to my school, Carol Lane Elementary in Corpus Christi, TX, in the early 1960's (almost 50 years ago). He was an old man then, apparently at least 90, but he was full of energy. I thought of him today while talking about the education of children with friends, so I googled him and found this article in Wikipedia. I was very pleased to see an article on the Chief and to learn that he lived to be 106.

He was an unforgettable character--I couldn't have been but in the 3rd or 4th grade--but I can still see him clearly in my mind. He stood on stage in the cafeteria in full-dress, beaded, fringed buckskin clothing with a quill breastplate and a headdress of eagle feathers that hung to the floor. He talked about the unfair way that American Indians had been portrayed in Hollywood, and he introduced us to the sound of real Sioux music and language and showed us the real way Indian people dance, not the way they were depicted in the movies and on television. He told us that chiefs in his tribe were elected, not born, and that American Indian society was a very democratic one.

He was the first person to introduce me to the idea of stereotypes, although he didn't use that word. I think the Chief's article should contain reference to his work with children, but I don't have access to that information. Perhaps his descendants or his tribe have that information and could add it to his article. I would also really like to see pictures of him, too, both as a young man and an older man. There must be some since he was an actor.

Paillasse (talk) 01:20, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Was the Chief real or pretending?
When I was little, my father had a copy of The Memoirs of Chief Red Fox and I read it with interest. It was quite an exciting book with a first-hand account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Many years later when the Internet was invented, I happened to look him up and found a number of books and articles alleging that the tribe he said he was from had never heard of him and that he had plagiarized sections of his memoir out of a previous book (or maybe his editor did). Here is an article from the Chicago Tribune about it. Here is another discussion from a book source.

Although Chief Red Fox sounds like a nice man from all I have read, the article really needs to be updated to include this controversy. Also if anyone has any definitive information as to whether he was ever proved a real or a fake, that would be helpful. TheBlinkster (talk) 17:43, 5 January 2016 (UTC)