Everyone is Racist

            On Monday morning while trying to translate “chasse filou" in "Complaint du progress" by Boris Vain and to make sense of it as one of the appliances that he lists I discovered that it’s really a made up implement. Later I found an article in French that confirms that a lot of the items like "waffle pistol" do not exist and are simply used to make consumerism look ridiculous. I’ll have to go back and reassess my adaptation.

            I started memorizing “La baigneuse de Brighton” but had to make adjustments in the translation as I went along. A "baigneuse" is a female bather but I think the way it's used means "bathing beauty". I needed to say it in two syllables but “bath girl" or "bath babe" doesn't really invoke the sea. I settled on "The Mermaid of Brighton" since a woman doesn't have to be an actual mermaid to be called one just like she wouldn't have to be an Amazon to be called one.

            I had time to shave and shower before leaving for class. I put the required reading on a flash drive and brought my laptop along since I hadn't had time to finish all the reading. This time there was another class in our lecture all and I assume thy will be there before us from now on at least for the fall term. That means that next time I won’t have to leave home an hour before class. I sat in the hall and read some of chapter one of Ways of Knowing.

            Our lecture was on the preface and chapter one.

            People have been studying Natives for centuries and yet Native Studies are only two generations old.

            Gate keeping is holding back knowledge and keeping the cultural stream pure. William Fenton was a gatekeeper and Professor White's nemesis.

            Who owns the past?

            Native Studies are more nuanced in Canada than in the United States.

            There are two schools of thought. There is the established framework of American studies.

            Interdiscipline is a jack-of-all-trades approach.

            Native literature was argued not to have critical mass because there were no Native critics.

            Native Studies don’t have meaning and importance until universities have Native or Indigenous Studies departments as opposed to “centres" and "institutes". Only Trent University in Canada and Arizona State University in the United States offer PhDs in Native Studies.

            Professor White told us that he participated in building a longhouse and the science works. It was quite solid by itself but they were required by law to use bolts and screws afterward.

            The clan mother and her daughters controlled the longhouse.

            Europeans thought of “Indians” as being dirty but Europeans were less inclined to bathe and to some Christians bathing too much was considered a type of devil worship.

            He said they are making another film adaptation of that horrible story, The Last of the Mohicans. It reflects an American fascination with the past. Indigenous people need to be understood on Indigenous terms.

            He mentioned the anthropocene and said the last cene was a million years ago. The term anthropocene is not yet fully recognized. The geological epoch we are currently in is the Holocene, which started 12,000 Years ago after the Ice Age. We can altr the planet. He said before he left the US for Canada he tried to pawn all his VHS tapes but nobody wanted them. He tried to recycle them but there was no facility for that and so they ended up in the dump.

            Native culture is grounded in thinking. The best education is dialogue but the United States has forgotten how to do that. When he came to Canada he was floored by the dialogue he saw in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation programming.

            We are reliant on the written word and the telephone game does not usually worked. He said he saw it work once. Someone said that we all know the story of Goldilocks because of oral tradition. But there are three versions of the story and it has become severely whitewashed since the 19^th Century and so one can’t really say that the oral tradition has successfully preserved it.

            The many native cultures are treated as interchangeable.
            One needs special training in memory for oral transference to be successful.

            How do we form intellectual disciplines and knowledge? Anthropology had similar growing pains but Native Studies is more complex.

            We had a ten-minute break.

            I asked the professor to clarify his statement about three species having their blood measured. He confirmed that the other two species are horses and dogs.

            I asked what is the difference between being a mixed member of a nation and being Métis but he seemed to say that he didn’t know. He said we would be covering it later. I get the impression that he’s only just ahead of us in reading our textbook and that he’s lecturing on it just after reading it.

            There are 634 recognized First Nations in Canada.

            In the United States there are 575 federally recognized Native tribes and federal recognition trumps that of the state because each nation feels communication is nation to nation. Most state recognized nations are in the south. On the US federal level only congress makes decisions about Indigenous communities.

            Indigenous Studies is a broad based scholarship.

            The professor’s friends don't like crossing the border with him because when he is asked for his citizenship he says, "Mohawk” and causes delays.

            The Onondaga and the Tonawanda still operate the way they did before European contact.

            There are two spellings: Haudenosaunee and Haudenoshaunee. One means people building a longhouse and the other means people that have build a longhouse.

            The words Iroquois, Mohawk and Sioux are not flattering terms.

            Calling some stories myths invalidates the knowledge.

            There is more hope on the Canadian side.

            Different nations and even different communities within nations have distinct views.

            “Good mind” is a vast concept.

            He asked, “Why do dogs sniff each other’s tails?" I asked, "Are you sure it's the tail they are sniffing?" He said they do but they don't. They sniff the anus, but anyway he told us a story about dogs going off with each other and gossiping about their masters. Something happened that caused them to have to remove their tails for a while but when they put their tails back on they all had the wrong ones. They sniff each other’s tails now because they are looking for their own tails.

            The moral is don’t gossip. Take responsibility for free speech.

            After class I went directly to my first tutorial, which was just half a block down Huron. I opened the door to room 75 a crack but there were people inside and I thought there was a class going on and so I closed it. The TA came out and told me I had the right room.

            Our TA is Safia Gahayr. She looks Ethiopian but is Somali. She said people that look like her are the minority in Ethiopia.

            She’s actually taught this course a couple of times.

            She says Equity and Indigenous Studies are both very tough to teach. She started in social justice education.

            We went around the room and everyone gave a little introduction of themselves. A lot of the students are in Criminology. I was surprised to find out that I’m the only one studying English.

            She said that in Somalia there is also an oral tradition.

            She told us that Kevin White's way of teaching is very much of a US style.

            She said something that I’ve heard before but it always stick sideways in my head: "Racialized people don't have the power to be racist."

            She told us that in our essays we should be aware of our words and use respectful terminology. The word “Aborigine” has implications of subhumanity while "Aboriginal person" is okay.

            Ways of knowing are views of the world and philosophies such as IK or Indigenous knowledge.

            She said the word “othering” was coined by Edward Said. I know he used the term but I can't find any reference to him inventing it.

            An example of gate keeping is that The Bluest Eye, one of Toni Morrison’s books was banned in the southern United States.

            She recommended the book Decolonizing the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.

            Many native people choose to reclaim the negative word “Indian"

            We have assignments due on October 21 and December 2.

            She asked if there were any questions and I asked her about her earlier statement that "Racialized people don't have the power to be racist." I asked what about racism between two racialized groups. She said that is internalized racism and that they can be biased and prejudiced but not racist. I told her the story of when I worked with an Ethiopian guy one day in the 1980s. He told me the story of escaping the war and even showed me where a bullet had creased his temple. He then said, “I just want to live in peace. I don’t hate anybody, except for Pakistanis." She said that people without power couldn’t cause harm by expressing prejudices. I argued that they could influence people in power with that kind of talk. I understand that to have privilege and power and to be racist is more harmful but all racism comes from the same state of mind. The whole class discussed this. One woman half agreed with Safia and half with me. A Pakistani guy in the back agreed entirely with me. If internalized racism has the word racism in it then it must be a type of racism.

            After class I headed over to Robarts because I wanted to get another student card but I found out that the T Card office is now in the Koffler Student Centre at College and St George. When I got there I was told that I needed to show a piece of government identification but of course I didn't have any because I'd lost my wallet. It seemed odd that they couldn’t just ask for my Utor id password, since that allows me access to confidential information. I was told I would have to go to my registrar’s office and get them to send them an email confirming my identification. I had twenty minutes before the T Card office would close and so I rushed up to Woodsworth. The woman at the desk didn’t know me and so I had to talk with one of her superiors who was seeing another student. The other student left and he invited me to his office. He asked me information about my courses and my birth date and things like that. He sent the email and I had ten minutes to get back to the T Card office. I got there with three minutes to spare. The young woman I’d spoken with before said she had been worried that I wouldn't make it. I stood against the screen to get my photo taken but when she told me to squat slightly I spread my legs and couldn’t help smiling. The picture makes me look balder than I look in the mirror. I rode up to OISE to renew some books and found out that they didn't need to see my card after all that rushing around.

            I rode down St George to Beverley and then to Queen and headed home.

            I was home too late to take a siesta or to have lunch since it was only a couple of hours till dinner.

            I did some exercises and listened to Amos and Andy. In this story Andy has met the girl of his dreams but when he goes to see her at her job he goes to the back to tap o the window and inside he sees her stealing money. He tells the police but is reluctant to incriminate her in court. He marries her and so he can’t testify against her but it turns out her brother forced him to marry her. The marriage is annulled and he is able to testify.

            I grilled frozen pork ribs.

            I had some of the ribs, a potato and gravy for dinner while watching Wagon Train.

            In this story the Major runs into an old friend named Hogan whom he’d known in New York as a constable and a boxer when he was a fight promoter. Hogan’s super power is having very fast fists. Now he is a rancher out west with a family. He always defends people and intervenes when his friend Cliff is being threatened by Jason Rance. He knocks Rance out with one punch but then Rance challenges him to a gunfight. Hogan does not use guns and decides at the coaxing of his wife to leave town with the family. But when Cliff turns up dead Hogan changes his mind. He confronts Rance in a bar at close range and challenges him to draw his gun while he will only use his fist. Rance draws but Hogan strikes him first. Rance inadvertently shoots himself and dies as he falls.

            Mary Hogan was played by Rachel Ames who was the longest running performer on General Hospital. She started in 1964 and she’s still on it. She made her film debut in 1954 with "When Worlds Collide"