Down the Academic Rabbit Hole of Indigenous Studies

            On Thursday morning I worked out most of the chords for the first two verses of “My chérie Jane” by Serge Gainsbourg. All that’s really left is one more chord for the second verse and the chords for the bridge and the rest just repeat.

            I looked for an old photo of mine on my computer but couldn’t find it and so I dug it out of a drawer and since I no longer have a functioning scanner I photographed it and uploaded it. The digital versions kept coming out slightly lopsided so that after cropping the border I kept losing part of the picture. This is not usually a problem because most pictures could lose a little on the edge but this one is a very well balanced photo of the close-up of someone’s behind bent over while wearing chequered pants. I had to re-shoot it to get it close enough so the crop didn’t do any damage to the design.

            At 12:30 I headed down to Spadina and College to meet with Professor Kevin White at the Centre for Indigenous Studies. I had a hard time finding the centre at first because, although I had the right address, the building at the front is just called The Borden Building. I went into the next building to the north because it was more accessible. It was the Multi-Faith Centre but I couldn’t find anything related to Indigenous Studies among the mumbo jumbo signs and no one I asked seemed to even know where they were. Finally I found the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the back of the Borden Building. Once I was inside I had a hard time finding Professor White’s office. A middle aged Indigenous woman who seemed to work there in the office helped me look but she had difficulty finding it too until she finally saw it.

            When I got to Professor White’s office I was surprised that he’d arranged for a moderator to be there. I didn’t mind her presence very much because she was an attractive and pleasant African Canadian woman. But while I had thought that this would simply be a discussion about his misuse of language in his lecture, I was shocked to discover that I’d been ambushed into a confrontation over my “behaviour” in lecture and in tutorials. Even though I had raised my hand on Monday to point out that he was giving incorrect information, he considered it part of a pattern that seemed to him to show that I have some kind of issue with discussion about residential schools. He cited a previous class in which he’d been talking about boarding schools in the United States and I spoke up while taking notes because I thought he’d said the students had been made to wear “SS uniforms”. He’d gotten testy with me when I’d asked the question while I’d just wanted to get it right in my notes exactly what he’d said. I explained that my response had nothing to do with the topic having been about residential schools. The main issue that was brought up was that Safia Gahayr, my TA, had complained that I’d been disrespectful towards her during tutorial. I had engaged in classroom discussion in the same manner that I had in all my other courses for the last twelve years. In philosophy and literature courses I had on most occasions been thanked by professors for my contributions to the class and my engagement with class discussions. This was the first time I’d ever been told that it was disrespectful to disagree with the instructor. I said that behaviour that had been thanked, praised and encouraged in other academic programs is suddenly offensive and I felt like I’d gone down the rabbit hole with Indigenous Studies.

            Welcome to Indigenous Studies! How dare you study us!

I was told that my comments had made other students uncomfortable as well. I wondered if the students themselves had complained or if this was just what Safia had said.

            Professor White, the moderator and I discussed the issue that I’d thought the meeting had meant to be about. He had made the statement that attendance in residential schools had been compulsory for indigenous students in Canada from 1920 on. I told him that the very fact that there were also government-sanctioned day schools proves that statement false. He repeated what Safia had said, which is that both day schools and residential schools were about assimilation and he seemed to think that I was trying to diminish just how horrific residential schools had been. I assured him that I was not trying to minimize that residential schools had been atrocious. I felt like I was being treated like I’d denied the Holocaust. I told him that to my mind one student in one residential school would have been an atrocity. My issue was with the claim that residential school attendance had been mandatory. I said that the facts are plenty heavy and so one does not need to lean on the scales. He bristled that that and denied that he’d been leaning on the scales. He kept on returning to the argument that both the day schools and residential schools were bad. I said yes but one was residential and the other wasn’t. I said it’s obvious that residential schools would be worse because day school students went home to their culture every day. The moderator said that I shouldn’t assume that to be obvious. Later Professor White said that residential schools were formed because the government felt that day schools had not been effective for the goal of assimilation. He didn’t seem to get it when I pointed out to him that he’d just proved my argument that day schools were different from residential schools.

            They found it hard to understand why this was an issue for me. I said it’s a problem because it’s inaccurate. We are supposed to be studying a Social Science here. I made the point that in saying that residential school attendance was compulsory he creates the wrong impression as to exactly what happened. I said it seems to me that there is a worry in this program that if one doesn’t give students the sense that every single indigenous student in Canada had been dragged off to a residential school then no one would feel the impact of how bad it was. I felt like I was getting through to the moderator on this issue.

            They argued that my manner of argument seems to be to argue to engage rather than to listen and that fits with the complaints that have been made about me. I find that ironic given that I didn’t get the impression that White was listening to me very much at all. Also given the fact that I had been surprised by this ambush I think it is reasonable that I was a bit defensive. I question the ethics as well of arranging a meeting about one thing and then surprising me by ganging up on me about another. Why not just say beforehand that the issue of my manner of argument was going to be discussed? Were they afraid I wouldn’t show up?

            Then to put the cherry on top of weird, Professor White offered to give me a private tutorial for the rest of the term in the same time slot as my current tutorial with the group. I said, “That sounds a bit special.” It also sounded like a punishment. I declined.

            Finally Professor White said he’d be more careful about his language but he added that I should be more careful about how I engage with people. I said that it certainly seems it I have to be aware that this course has sensitive people in it unlike any I’ve encountered in any other academic program. I don't think that it serves Indigenous Studies well for students to attend classes and tutorials as a type of therapy.

            Safia thought that she was being disrespected by my verbal disagreement with her “facts”. The irony is that I engaged with her out of respect but now I have lost all respect for her as an instructor and I won’t try to share information with her at all anymore.

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought three bags of grapes, two bags of cherries, a pack of ground chicken, a jar of honey, a box of spoon size shredded wheat and a loaf of Bavarian sandwich bread.

            I had my last pork chop for lunch.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I grilled some chicken drumsticks and had two with three small potatoes and gravy while watching the first episode of the second season of Zorro.

            In this story Diego and Bernardo arrive in Monterrey and check into an inn. Suddenly to masked men enter Diego’s room and rob him. The curious thing is that they know Diego by name and they are looking for 17000 pesos that they think he brought from Los Angeles. Diego says he has not brought that amount with him. They slap him and Bernardo around for a while and finally give up. They take Diego’s spending money and his expensive pocket watch. The next day they go to see Gregorio Verdugo who is hoping for money for his import business that Diego is supposed to bring from investors in Los Angeles. But several people have been robbed and so Diego chose not to bring the money this time until he has a chance to investigate. Verdugo is disappointed but his daughter Anna Maria is insulted because they interpret Diego's response as an implication that her father is in league with the thieves. Later Anna Maria is in Monterrey with a man named Romero and they observe Bernardo carrying Diego’s saddlebag very gingerly through the market. They assume that he is carrying the money and they come to Diego’s room with a gun to confront him and demand to look in the saddlebag. What is really in the saddlebag is Diego’s Zorro costume. Bernardo manages to switch the costume with some clothing before they can open the bag. Later Bernardo observes two men at the bar and one of them has Diego’s watch. He follows them but gets kidnapped. Diego is later informed that he needs to deliver 17000 pesos to get his servant back. Zorro follows the man that gave him the message to a cottage outside of town. He rescues Bernardo and knocks out Lee Van Cleef. While going after the other one Lee Van Cleef begins to wake up, Bernardo recovers Diego’s watch and hits him over the head with it, knocking him out again but winds up breaking the watch.

            Anna Maria is played by Jolene Brand, who appeared on several TV shows but her only film was the B movie “Giant from the Unknown”. She was married to George Schlatter, who created Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.