Noor Inayat Khan

            It had been snowing when I went to bed and when I woke up at some point I thought I heard the wet scraping of snowploughs. I dreaded having to ride my bike through a dangerous mess to the first class of the winter term. But when I got up it turned out that the streets were clear and the most abundant snow was on top of some of the passing cars.

I worked out the translation for “My chérie Jane” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I updated my journal.

            I got a general email from my TA telling us that tutorial would be cancelled because she was sick. I’m sorry she’s sick but it was music to my eyes to read that I’d be able to get home from class an hour early.

            The lights were out in the lecture hall when I opened the door but they went on when I walked in because I’m so bright.

            The professor said, “Happy 2020!” but there was silence in the room.

            He asked if we’d enjoyed our break. Someone responded that it was too short.

            He said back in the States he’s used to a six-week break.

            He told us that he’s uploaded to Quercus a reading for us on wampum research.

            Why study this stuff? Because it’s still going on.

            There is a general, “It wasn’t me!” mentality.

            People are still benefiting from colonization.

            He said Trump is the first president to consider bombing culturally significant sites. But is he really the first? What about the bombing of Dresden during WWII?

            The sacred Six Grandfather’s Mountain of the Sioux was defiled by carving the faces of US presidents out of the rock.

            Treaties between nations tend to be for peace and friendship.

            Peace equals lack of war.

            Not being pushed around.

            To be in peace is to live free in reciprocity and friendship.

            Wampum belts were the starting points of treaties.

            Thomas King used 1985 as a timeline demarcation. Why use demarcations? Much of modern fiction is set during WWII.

            Wounded Knee under Lincoln was largest mass murder in US history. The largest was the 13000 Union prisoners that died because of overcrowding at the Confederate run war prison at Fort Sumter. Then comes 9-11 but by US troops one could say that the Elmira prison deaths of almost the same number of Confederate soldiers as the victims of 9-11 were a massacre. There was the Opelousas massacre of black people by white people with a body count of 300. Wounded knee is striking because 200 of the possible 300 that were killed were women and children.

            Professor White says that he once title a paper, “Oops We Did It Again!”

            Disney puts movies in the vault to reintroduce them later.

            In his experience most students do not read the course books but rather the Cliff Notes.

            He says peer reviewed books are not always accurate. He said his nemesis William Fenton, the “Dean of Iroquoian studies represents the negative side of peer review.

            He says they say Indigenous scholars can’t review each other’s work because they know each other.

            The most detrimental weapon used against Natives is authenticity. Restrictions were imposed on identity. It’s a means of dismissal because once one is less than 25% one cannot claim to be Native. Indigenous identity is about who recognizes you.

            How nations recognize members varies from nation to nation. Sometimes it’s matrilineal, sometimes it’s patrilineal and sometimes it’s both.

            The majority of Natives are off reserve. He says he’s a city Indian who grew up in Rochester.

            The Freedmen were African American slaves owned by the Cherokee. The tensions over recognizing Freedmen as Cherokee has gotten worse over the last twenty to thirty years. There is brown on brown racism.

            Some nations adopt scholars.

            They were historically more inclusive than exclusive. They were more exclusive from the 19^th Century on.

            He asked us for the difference between Canadian and US culture. I said we are closer attuned with British culture.

            He said that headlights have to be on all the time in Canada. That’s true for most of Europe too.

            He said in New York there is a yearly safety inspection but in Canada it’s only once. The federal government has nothing to do with car safety inspections and it varies from province to province just like from state to state. A student told him that in Nova Scotia it’s once a year.

            The two-row metaphor of the wampum belt symbolizes co-existence.

            There are Indigenous chefs. Men are associated with being chefs while most cooks are women.

            He said he’s an Oakland Raiders fan and he hates the New England “cheaters”.

            He said some Natives choose the boat over the canoe. Is he serving his community by being a U of T professor?

            In the States he has students correct him when he calls himself an Indian.

            Indigenous people in the United States make up 3% of the military. 19% of Native Americans are in the military according to one site. It’s 3% in Canada too.

            Professor White is a third generation military person. He’s proud of but questions his service.

            Until Bill C-31 Native women lost status. It can still be lost. As far as I can tell no one with status can lose it since C-31.

            At this point he started talking about the States again.

            Full blood status male + full blood status female = daughter with status

            Daughter with status + full blood man = son with status

            Son with status + full blood non-status woman = daughter with status

            That daughter with status + full blood man = full blood non-status son

There is a second-generation cut-off. Is this post C-31?

On August 15, 2019 Canada removed the 1951 cut off from the Indian Act. It's the last provision of Bill-S3 to come into force. As a result all known gender based inequities have been eliminated.

In the US it’s done by blood quantum. Full plus one-quarter equals five eighths. The professor is five eighths. He has status in Canada but not necessarily in the US. It keeps on dividing for each generation that marries out. Blood quantum is designed to reduce obligations. The US has a chart that puts it down to tiny fractions.

In both the United States and Canada if one is less than 25% Native one is non-Native. I don’t think that’s true now. It may come down to decisions by individual First Nations about who is a member.

Bear clan cannot marry Bear clan because they are relatives.

One can be adopted by a clan.

One could be full blood Native but unrecognized by other nations.

He said it’s like Harry Potter with full bloods and Mugs. He confessed that he spent the holidays watching Harry Potter.

Then the professor brought up an issue that took me by surprise. He said George Elliot Clark is a friend with a poet named Steven Kummerfield who beat and killed an Indigenous woman. Kummerfield was found guilty but was paroled after five years. He changed his name to Steven Brown and became a poet. George was scheduled to give a lecture at the University of Regina but there were so many angry calls that he cancelled. So basically George is being blamed for someone being paroled earlier than the public wants.

The professor made the statement again that residential schools had been compulsory from 1920 on. I raised my hand and told him it wasn’t true. The Indian Act stated that school was compulsory and that the Superintendent General would determine whether a Native child went to a day school, an industrial school or a residential school. We argued briefly and he said we should talk about it after class time. Class was over and so I approached him. He gave me the same line that Safia had about day schools and residential schools being the same. I said that would be like saying that a daytime prison sentence and full time prison are the same. He asked, “Aren’t they?” I said it would be like comparing the building we were standing in to the CN Tower. Whether there is indoctrination in both cases does not make them the same if one can go home to one’s culture every day. He said I should make an appointment to discuss it with him. Later by email we agreed on meeting at his office on Thursday at 13:00.

On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought three bags of cherries and four bags of grapes.

I had a cold pork chop with hot sauce and two spoons of yogourt for a late lunch.

I took a late siesta.

I worked on typing my lecture notes.

For dinner I had three potatoes, two small pork chops, a bunch of broccoli and gravy while watching episode two of the twelfth season of Doctor Who.

Spoiler alert!

The previous episode had ended with the Doctor and her team on a plane about to crash because it had been sabotaged by The Master. The Doctor had been transported to the strange limbo place that’s like a forest of vertical things that look like trees but maybe aren’t where Yasmin had been earlier. At first she thinks she’s alone but then she meets a woman from the 19^th Century named Ada. She says she thinks they are both inside of her mind because this happens when her body is paralysed in another place. One of the aliens appears and Ada thinks it’s her guardian. When Ada is transported back to her time the Doctor grabs her hand. They are in 1834 at a scientific exhibition that Ada had been attending before being paralysed. The Doctor realizes that Ada is Ada Lovelace the mathematician daughter of Lord Byron and the first person to conceive of the idea of a computing machine. The Master appears and the Doctor learns that the aliens are the Kasaavans. The Doctor and Ada are transported to 1943 Paris where they meet Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator to cross enemy lines during WWII. 

The Master pursues them there as well and using a psychic disguise is able to pose as a Nazi officer, despite the fact that he’s really a brown man. The Doctor meets the Master on top of the Eiffel Tower and he tells her that he’s been to their home planet of Gallifrey and it’s been scorched. The Doctor has leaked false information to the Nazis that the Master is a double agent and she also sabotages his disguise so the Nazis can see what he really looks like. He has to live out the next 77 years in normal time while the Doctor steals his Tardis and escapes. All this time the Doctor’s team has tried to go dark to avoid capture by Barton. Barton, as the head of a company like Google that has access to everyone’s identity, plans to use his access to rewrite everyone’s DNA so they can be taken over by Kasaavans. The Doctor has sabotaged the rewriting machinery and sends the Kasaavans back to their dimension along with the Master. The Doctor goes to Gallifrey and sees the destruction. A hologram of the Master appears telling her that he destroyed it because he found out that everything they’d been told was a lie.