How Victoria Won Over the Indians

            On Saturday morning I started copying a version of the chords to “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian and worked out the chords for "Titicaca" by Serge Gainsbourg.

            The keys on this Dell keyboard are so high compared to the old one I saw a little mountain goat leaping from the G to the F.

            I started re-reading The Indian Act. That Superintendent General sure has a lot of power.

            I went to No Frills where I bought three bags of grapes, a half pint of strawberries, a small pack of pork chops, coffee, Irish Spring, mouthwash, some cheap cheese for cooking, some petroleum jelly and a few containers of Greek yogourt. I'd thought for sure that I'd picked five containers of yogourt but I was charged for six. I was going to point the cashier's mistake out to her when I thought I’d double check. It turned out that I had bought six after all.

            When I got home my landlord was in the hall with a new kitchen faucet for me, this time with two dials, so hopefully it’ll last longer.

            I read some more of the Indian Act out loud. It is so repetitious and in legalese and so dry that it’s like I’m inhaling blackflies through my eyes.

            Raja told me that he’s pretty sure that Popeye’s will be renting the space downstairs after Coffeetime moves out. They probably wouldn’t open until March or April though since they would have to renovate. That probably means that I’ll have to depend on the espresso place across the street for wifi and it’ll be weaker.

            The new faucet seems better because even if the actual tap were to get loose I’d still have control over the hot and cold water.

            I had a cheese and hot Genoa salami sandwich for lunch.

            I finished most of my second reading of the Indian Act. There's a provision where in the case of arresting an Indian without a name the official is allowed to name them by description.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. The audio was really bad on this one but the basic story is that Kingfish and Sapphire decide to rent a room in their house to make extras money to renovate. After several odd interviews they finally rent to a young woman. But this woman has an overbearing older sister that comes over and uses the place as well. They want to try to get rid of their tenant and so Kingfish gets Andy to pose as a health inspector. He tells the woman that she’s taking up all the oxygen in the house. She says she opens the window but Andy tells her that lets all the oxygen out. It turns out that her sister is dating the chief health inspector for Harlem. Kingfish tries to force her out by doubling her rent but that just causes her sister and her boyfriend to move in.

            I finished re-reading the Indian Act. The shittiest part is that Native women of any age are considered to have fewer rights in their family than any male of fourteen years of age or older. But to be fair, at the time of the Indian Act no women in Canada were considered to be persons in terms of rights and privileges.

            I read Treaty 6, which was first signed at the same time that the Indian Act was passed. In this treaty a large amount of land consisting of what is now a quarter each of Saskatchewan and Alberta (Including the future site of Edmonton) was ceded by several mostly Cree western tribes in exchange for reservation land and various amounts of money and supplies. There are additional tribes that add their names to the treaty for the next almost 100 years. The main difference between Treaty 6 and The Indian Act is that no chiefs negotiated, signed or agreed to the Indian Act. But this treaty continues to be disputed because it was written in English and poorly translated so that the chiefs agreed to things that were not in the treaty. They had not realized they were selling the land but had thought instead that it had been a treaty for sharing it such as they might have made with another tribe. They also assumed that since their ruler, Victoria, was a woman that she would want to share.

            I read half of treaty six again out loud.

            I had oven fries with salsa and melted cheese for dinner, forgetting that I’d bought ground beef on Thursday. I watched two episodes of Zorro.

            In this story some highwaymen intercept a tax collector on his way to Los Angeles and force him to give them his papers. One of them then poses as a tax collector and raises the taxes to such a degree that several men are placed in jail for not being able to pay. Don Diego offers to pay their taxes but the magistrate says it is too late as the men have been sold to be indentured servants in the mines. Zorro rescues them in the desert with the help of Bernardo posing as another Zorro. This was another plot by the eagle feather organization. With the slaves freed, the slave trader takes the eagle feather thugs that had sold the men to the mines instead.

            In the second story a man is murdered at the fort and Don Diego finds an eagle feather beside him. Later Diego’s father tries to match him with a childhood friend named Magdalene who has grown up to be a beautiful woman. A party is held in her honour by Diego’s father but the evil magistrate is also there and Diego observes that she passes him an eagle feather. Diego picks the magistrate’s pocket and doctors the feather, thinking that it will signal for the magistrate’s death when he hands it to the assassin but it turns out to signal Magdalena’s death. As Zorro he rides to save her as the assassin pursues her wagon. He catches up just as the assassin does. While he is struggling on the back of the wagon with the assassin, Magdalena stabs the killer. Zorro advises Magdalena to go back to Mexico City.

            Magdalena was played by Julie Van Zandt who held the Guinness World record for the biggest needlefish ever caught and was also a painter. Her and her husband founded the Malibu Art Festival.