Red Blood: One (Mostly) White Guy's Encounters with the Native World

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and an honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

Red Blood is an autobiography of the well-known eco-activist, Robert
Hunter, founder of the Greenpeace movement in Vancouver. An explanation
for the book’s title comes early on when Hunter talks about his
part-Huron ancestry and his involvement with the Native world, from his
participation in sweat lodges and drunken parties to his promotion of
Native issues and inclusion in events. What follows is the account of a
life filled with adventure, risk, good humor, and high drama.

Hunter’s environmental activism has taken him to many places
including the Pacific (to save the whales), British Columbia, the
Arctic, and the Caribbean (to intercept the recreated Columbus fleet)
where he frequently protests alongside sympathetic Natives (the Kwakiutl
made him an honorary member). When he isn’t active on the front lines,
he’s writing about them; Hunter is the environmental reporter for
City-TV in Toronto, an Eye magazine columnist, and the author of 11
books, including Warriors of the Rainbow (1979) and the Governor
General’s Award-winning Occupied Canada  (1991).

Throughout Red Blood there are moments of self-analysis, exemplified by
Hunter’s admission that he carries “burdens of old Catholic guilt
reflexes.” The terse statement, “I could not stand leaders, and
detested followers,” more or less sums up his attitude toward
politics, while his personal philosophy is revealed in comments like
“Fate manifests itself through the medium of other people.” Finally,
such phrases as “broken plate-glass cracks of lightning,” “media
spawn,” and “sleeping flubbery of horses” testify to the vigor and
originality of Hunter’s prose. His many admirers will welcome this
book.