Trick or Treaty

            On Monday morning I memorized half of “Des vents des pets des poums” (Farting Up a Storm) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think he’s playing with an expression in French similar to the English “farting around” as in "doing nothing”. So it would be like talking about someone that is farting around but having them really farting.

            I re-read another chapter or so of the Picture of Dorian Gray. I have another seventy pages to go.

            I took an early siesta before leaving for school. I rode through the first major snowfall of the season and the earliest major November snowfall that I could remember. It wasn’t every slippery on the way downtown. There was another class ahead of ours. Sometimes there’s a class and sometimes there isn’t. When there is a class it's the same one with the professor that looks about ninety. I think it might be a criminology class.

            I sat in the hall and read some more of The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Oscar Wilde speaks of Théophile Gautier a lot and in this chapter quotes two poems from a book by him called Emaux et Camées. One quote is a line from a poem about the severed hand of the famous poet-murderer Lacenaire. Lacenaire is one of the four main characters in my favourite movie, Les Enfants du Paradis”. The other poem quotes three verses about Venice. I translated one verse:

“Balanced on a scale chromatic

Her breasts dripping pearl beads

Venus of the Adriatic

Rises, a pale pink, from the sea”

            I told Professor White that Yale Belanger, the author of our textbook, uses the French pronunciation of his name as in “Belanzyay”. It’s been starting to annoy me the way he and Safia have been sounding the “R” at the end.

            He said he was happy to learn that his hometown in upstate New York would be getting a lot more snow than Toronto. He told us that he was surprised that he wasn’t wearing Birkenstocks today because this was just a light peppering as far as he was concerned.

            In addition to the essay we have to hand in next week we have a reflection paper to hand in on December 2. We have to compare two different documents that he will present to us next week so we have two weeks to write the essay.

            Our lecture was about treaties but he focused on treaties in the United States while this course is supposed to be about Canadian Indigenous studies.

            Wampum belts marked the beginnings of agreements. The language of a wampum treaty is composed of symbols. They hold words and are a type of writing. They are powerful metaphors.

            He showed us the same slide with the images of various wampum belts that he’s shown us two weeks before.

            In the top left was the Dish With One Spoon treaty wampum belt, the first of which was made in the 12^th Century, before European contact. The most well known of Dish With One Spoon Treaties is the one between the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee in 1701 to share the territory between the mouth of the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes. I wonder if the sale of Toronto by the Mississauga is a breach of that treaty or if the deal somehow included that treaty in its wording.

            The top middle belt in the slide is the Hiawatha treaty that marks the formation of the Haudenosaunee confederation. In the middle, represented by a pine tree are the Onondaga. White pine needles grow in clusters of five. On the far right are the Mohawk and on the far left are the Seneca. On the inside right are the Oneida and on the inside left are the Cayuga. The stories say the belt was made in 900 AD.

            The Two-Row belt was at first between the Mohawk and the Dutch. The “V”s in the middle stand for peace forever.

            The Canandaigua Treaty of 1794 shows the thirteen colonies plus the guardians of the eastern and western gate, that is the Mohawk and the Seneca. George Washington commissioned it.

            The Haudenosaunee like to have Quakers at treaty negotiations with colonists because they are neutral.

            He said again that it blows him away that Canada continues to negotiate treaties.

            There was a complaint that Indigenous warriors were rendered useless by European style education.

            He asked us how many of us thought we could survive if we were suddenly alone in the woods for three days. I don’t think anyone raised their hands. He referenced the show Survivor and asked what the players try to secure first. Someone said water. He said he hadn't thought of that but he was thinking of shelter and fire. He told us that leaves are good insulation.

            He talked of right of title for land. Sometimes when one buys land they are only buying a limited depth of the area below the surface. I looked into this later and apparently the owner retains mineral and mining rights beneath their property but certain resources like gold and silver belong to the crown.

            The government can take your land if they need it through eminent domain but the owner would be compensated according to the market value of the property.

            Right of occupancy is different from ownership. Professor White owns his house in upstate New York. Owners can do what they want, he said, but that’s not entirely true.

            Treaties are examples of sovereignty. Citizens cannot negotiate treaties. Canada and the United States have treaties.

            Natives saw treaties as being between two nations that secured goods and guarantees in exchange for land. The Canandaigua treaty dictates that every year the United States government must provide $4500 worth of muslin cloth to the Six Nations. Treaty making ended in the United States.

            Treaties were broken by the building of dams.

            The keystone pipeline leaked 1.7 million litres in North Dakota a few days ago.

            He asked if any of us read the contracts online before clicking “I agree”. No one does.

            He brought up “OK Boomer” and said he was safe because he’s a Gen Xer. I thought he fought in the Korean War. How could he be of Generation X? Maybe he just meant that he’d been stationed in Korea when he was in the marines.

            If everyone is a little unhappy after a treaty negotiation it’s been successful.

            He said that people on social media were referring to the Native people that recently participated in a Niagara Peninsula annual deer cull as “barbarians”. They also called them sub-humans and drunks and called for their extermination.

            In Canasatego’s speech at the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster he suggested that Indigenous people are the older brothers of the colonists. The colonists considered themselves the parents. Over a hundred years before the Dutch had come in a ship with gifts. He said his people were so pleased with them that they tied their ship to the bushes. Liking them better later thy tied their ship to the trees. Liked them even better after a little longer they tied their ship to a rock. Finally they liked them so much they tied their ship to a mountain.

            The covenant chain: Dutch to English to US to Canada.

            He mentions a silver chain for its symbolism as when the treaty members come back together they polish it.

            Words have consequences. Look at Don Cherry.

            Difference between written and spoken word. While someone is speaking one can also read their tone. Speakers can also correct themselves.

            It is a myth that indigenous people did not own land. They had territories.

            With wampum treaties each person would remember a segment and get the wampum that represented that part.

            Wampum was never money although it was traded for.

            If one was unhappy with how the treaty had been handled one might paint it red or black and throw it at the other side's feet. Or one might break an arrow.

            If you bind five arrows together they can't be broken. The US dollar shows an eagle holding thirteen bound arrows.

            In the 1820s the Cherokee were forcibly removed from their native territory. President Jackson fought for this move. He should have been impeached.

            The Royal Proclamation 1760 moved all Indians west of the Appellations.

            In 1830 the line became the Mississippi.

            The final stage was Oklahoma, which became known as Indian Territory. But in 1907 Oklahoma was opened up for Irish immigrants to settle.

            Marshall trilogy is set of United States Supreme Court decisions affirming the legal and political standing of Indian nations.

            Johnson versus M’intosh in 1823 held that private citizens could not purchase land from Native Americans.

            The Cherokee Nation versus Georgia held that the Cherokee was the ward and the United States the guardian. The Cherokee won in court. They had their own written word. They were Christian, educated, with some doctors and lawyers and yet they were still considered uncivilized.

            Worcester versus Georgia held that the federal government was the sole authority to deal with Indian nations.

            The big plant based economy at the time was tobacco.

            In constitutional law, congress makes laws, the judicial branch interprets them and the executive branch enforces them.

            He said he didn't know whether Trump sees himself as a king or a dictator.

            Bush was the first president to use executive power to overrule congress. 

            The Northwest Ordinance in 1787 created the next set of states. Britain ceded the area south of the Great Lakes.

            The founding of the US army.

            In 1887 Dawes decided Indians have too much land.

            In the 60s someone asked how many treaties with white people have the Indians broken. The answer was none. How many treaties have white people kept? The answer is none.

            In Canada the Indian Act is supposed to give you a headache. Protection towards assimilation.

            He said the difference between Canada and the United States in regard to treaties is that Canada says we’re going to do this anyway so you might as well sign while the United States puts a gun to your head and tells you to sign.

            Near the end the treaties in the United States became more declarative. Leaving the reservation could be seen as an act of war.

            Professor White mentioned the TV series Hell on Wheels.

            The Black Hills land grant has accumulated to $1.6 billion. The Lakota are the poorest nation in the United States but they refuse to touch the money because what they want are the Black Hills.

            Eight women and two men came to our tutorial. Safia was late.

            Safia said that our assignment is too complex.

            Safia asked Nicole how the Caribbean had been. Nicole said that it was great for her heart condition because there is no air conditioning outside of the resorts.

            Safia agreed that we should be learning about treaties in Canada more so than in the United States.

            In the Nanfan Treaty of 1701 the Haudnosaunee granted the King of England a large portion of land that is now the Midwest and southern Ontario.

            In 1760 the treaty of Oswegwatchie the seven nations of Canada that had allied themselves with the French were assured they could keep their land and remain Catholic in exchange for remaining neutral for the rest of the war.

            The Murray Treaty of 1760 brought the Huron under British protection. They were granted freedom of custom and religion and exempted from taxation and military service. They were essentially given everything that the French had given them.

            The Royal Proclamation of 1763 established the western boundary

The Robinson Superior and Robinson Huron Treaties of 1850 gave money and fishing and hunting rights in exchange for land in Northern Ontario.

In 1869 the Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land to Canada at the request of the British even though the US was offering more. This led to the Metis Rebellion and the formation of Manitoba.

Starting in 1871 were the numbered treaties.

The Indian Act was passed in 1876 controlling every aspect of the lives of Indigenous Canadians. Chretien presented a white paper about trashing the Indian Act but Native people submitted a red paper to counter it. The Indian Act was the only way to hold the government accountable. Wearing Indigenaity is part of the Indian Act.

Residential schools were designed to train working class servants.

Bill C-31 to amend the Indian Act passed into law in 1985. It addressed the gender discrimination of the Indian Act and to restore status to those that had been enfranchised because of that discrimination. The purpose is to conform the Indian Act to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

6(1) status people are those that can pass their status to their children.

6(2) have status but cannot pass status to children unless their partner also has status.

Indian men marry white women and the white women get full status and their children are born with full status.

While C-31 protects people from losing status by gender discrimination, there is an excruciating amount of red tape and travel expenses for those that have lost their status to gain it back. There is a rift between members of communities.

Nicole is Wendat. She says they are matriarchal. The Ojibwa are not matriarchal and so I guess the Wendat share more with the Haudenosaunee than their language base.

            Nicole says people in the Caribbean are bleaching their skin.

            A student announced that Don Cherry had been fired and that “Good riddance” was trending. She said she was at work at a store when someone asked a minority colleague where their poppy was. She wasn’t wearing a poppy either and yet the person zeros in on the minority.

            It was treacherous and slippery riding my bike home through the snow. I would have stopped to buy some grapes at Loblaws but I just wanted to get home from the wet and cold.

            I had my last drumstick for lunch.

            I worked on typing my lecture notes.

            I mopped up the melted snow from my bike and my neighbour Benji told me that the donut shop downstairs doesn’t have heat right now because they were unprepared for an early winter.

            I grilled three striploin steaks and had one for dinner with a potato and gravy while watching Zorro. In this story Dona Luisa and Elena Torres are arrested by Captain Monastario as a way to try to force them to sign a letter saying Don Nacho is a traitor. They refuse and so they remain in jail. Zorro arrives to rescue them but he is overpowered way too easily by the soldiers and when Monastario unmasks him it is Elena’s boyfriend Benito. Monastario is about to hang him when the real Zorro arrives to rescue Benito. The Torres women remain in jail though.