Stop Asking Questions and Let Me Teach the Class!

            On Monday morning after yoga a practiced one verse of one song in French to keep it in my memory and then I started the final push of working on my Indigenous Studies essay. From time to time I checked my email because I was hoping for a message from U of T that classes would be cancelled because of the snow storm that was still going on outside. But I received no email and the snow eased off. My paper was mostly done except for the conclusion and harmonizing a few elements in the body. The essay was finished in plenty of time to get armoured up for my first real winter bike ride of the school year.

            I put on my very worn old pair of sweat pants for long underwear and an extra shirt. I pulled on three pairs of socks including the big wool ones and slipped my Kodiaks on top. I had been dreading the ride to campus because I thought for sure it would be dangerous but I was surprised to find it was far less treacherous than I’d expected. Only on Maple Grove did I have to ride on top of slippery hard snow. The riding was fairly smooth all the way to Huron and then it got nasty. It hadn’t been ploughed at all and riding up to Willcocks was a severe balancing act. The next time after a snowfall I'll just ride up St George, which is sooner cleared.

            Associate Professor White admitted that that he bungled the first part of the term in not being fully prepared to teach a full course. Down in the states he had only instructed half courses.

            That being said he continued to teach another US centric class with occasional gratuitous mentions of Canada.

            The desperate salvaging of Indigenous knowledge took place from the 1870s to the 1930s at the same time that there was a push to wipe Native culture from every young mind.

            He said that when people ask his nationality he tells them Mohawk.

            The effort to give a European education to Indigenous people goes back to colonial times.

            He said that the western method of education compared to Indigenous Americans is that the west starts with the big picture and work back while Indigenous people begin with observation.

            He said Japan does zero testing before the fourth grade. It didn’t take much research for me to discover that the professor was perpetuating another myth. Japanese students don’t have national standardized tests before the sixth grade but they are tested by their teachers pretty much continuously from the beginning of school.

            Both day schools and residential schools had the goal of removing the Indian from the child. New territories always wanted to deal with the Indian problem.

            Professor White told us the story about his sister. She has a daughter who had a learning disability and could not speak until she was five. When she was pregnant with her second child a teacher said to her, “Maybe you shouldn’t drink with this one.”

            Schools for Indigenous people tended to prepare them for work as labourers.

            Richard Pratt's philosophy for educating Indigenous people was, "Kill the Indian and save the man." He found that Geronimo's warriors were willing to cut their hair. Cutting hair demonstrates grief or is a way of shaming. He farmed Indigenous children; sometimes taken from home until they were sixteen, out for labour.

            For decades the Mohawk Institute was a respected school. Carlisle started in 1877. There were nutrition experiments conducted. Treaty rations were withheld to force parents to send their children to boarding school. I see that there were also experiments in feeding extra supplements instead of full meals to some children and an experimental flour mixture that was illegal in the rest of Canada in two residential schools.

            He said that residential schools started in Canada in the 1820s but I think one should distinguish between schools that were entirely conceived of and run by churches and the later government sanctioned schools.

            The government took the control of residential schools away from the churches in 1969 and the last residential school closed in 1996.

            In 1971 Blue Quills University became the first Native owned and operated school in Canada. As far as I've been able to find out the United States didn't give Natives the right to run their own schools until 1975, so we win again.

            In the residential schools there was criminal and sexual abuse.

            Sterilization without informed consent after giving birth has been performed as recently as 2018 in Saskatchewan.

            The Catholic, the Presbyterian, the Anglican and the United churches carved up the population of Native children in Canada. In the United States it was the Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Unitarian, Lutheran and Quaker churches. Churches stole Indians from each other.

            He asked us to name what we know about Abraham Lincoln. I said he wore a stovepipe hat. He said that Lincoln is not remembered fondly by Indigenous Americans. Four hundred Sioux were sentenced to hang. Lincoln spared most of them but still had to make a show and so 38 were hung and it was the largest public hanging in US history.

            Ely Parker was a Seneca US army officer, attorney, engineer and diplomat. He had one foot in a canoe and one in a boat.

            He said in the 1850s residential schools were compulsory for children between eight and fifteen. Actually they weren’t technically compulsory until 1920 but between 1894 and 1920 Indian agents had the power to decide if a child should be sent to a residential school. Until the 1940s there were more children in Indian Affairs day schools than in residential schools. The first year that residential school enrolment exceeded that of day school was 1944. The percentage of all First Nations children attending residential schools that year was about 33%. They were supposed to eventually pay for themselves but when they didn’t by 1951 the government, finding day schools cheaper, began working with the provinces to integrate all Native children into public schools.

            In the states there were Indian agents that cut blankets meant for Indians in half and sold half.

            Merrill Gates was a scholar of Indigenous studies but also believed in reforming Indians.

            The Hawthorn Report of n1966 was a survey of contemporary Indians of Canada. It recommended that all forced assimilation programs be abolished.

            He said that Trudeau said that the recommended reparations for residential schools were too high. I shot back that he didn’t actually say that. Trudeau is not disputing the compensation but they need more time to study how to properly deliver the compensation.

            The compared Trudeau’s very public apology to the paper apology that was filed with no fanfare in the United States. A couple of students started ranting about how there is no difference between the two and one woman said Trudeau’s “mealy mouthed” apology was nothing without action. Obviously a public apology is better because the government will be called on it. In his first term Trudeau halved the number of long-term water advisories on reserves.

            Luther Standing Bear was a Lakota chief and Gertrude Bonnin was a Sioux writer. They were at the forefront of the progressive movement to change government policy toward Native Americans.

            Plenty Horses was a Carlisle school survivor who killed a soldier and said he did so to redeem himself as a warrior among his people upon being hanged. But he was acquitted.

            The Indigenous suicide rate in Canada is three times higher than for non-Indigenous people. It’s more than 3.5% higher in the United States.

            There were only five of us in tutorial. Safia told us that she has seasonal affective disorder.

            She and I had an argument because I told her that she had given us incorrect t information about residential schools. She had said that every Indigenous child went to residential schools from 1920 to 1951. I told her that there were no residential schools in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland. I said that the biggest year for residential schools was 1931 when there were 17000 students enrolled. There couldn’t possibly have been only 17000 school age Native children in Canada in 1931. She was indignant about being contradicted and reminded me that she has taught this course for years. She said she wouldn’t debate with me there but if I emailed her she would set me straight.

            She said in 1884 European leaders met for the Berlin Conference and divided up Africa. She said the south is where the resources are and the north is where they go.

            The Sixties Scoop involved Native kids being forced into foster homes from the late 50s to the 80s. It happened to my ex-girlfriend’s kids in the 80s. I don’t think it was federal though but rather provincial, since federal government passed the control of Native social services over to the provinces in the 1950s. .

            John A. MacDonald started the residential school system.

            The Indian Act supposedly made residential schools mandatory in 1920, but I’ve downloaded the 1927 amendment to the Indian Act and the actual wording is that "Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated by the Superintendent General.” So what was mandatory was attending school. It wasn’t technically mandatory for Indigenous children to attend residential schools unless the superintendent general said so.

            All of the churches involved but the Catholic Church have apologized.

            We discussed the idea of the “empty” apology and Safia said that it’s empty if it is not followed by action. I asked if there wasn’t some action and suddenly Safia expressed dissatisfaction with the way I “push back”. She said, “Questions are good but it’s the way you do it!”

            Lump sums of compensation don’t help when people are damaged and need healing.

            What kind of education are Indigenous students getting now? There are a very small number of Indigenous students at U of T.

            Integration versus assimilation. Safia said, “You all know the difference.” I said, “Not really.” Someone said that assimilation is forced. Assimilation is fully adopting another culture whereas integration is entering a society as part of a different group but as an equal. The dictionary says to assimilate is to become the same. To integrate is to become part of the whole.

            She told the story of a friend of hers who was a teacher. There was a Native student in her class that knew the whole alphabet except for the letter “G”. On the last day of class he presented her with a piece of artwork with a big letter “G” on it, proving that he had understood that letter but had left it out to maintain control.

            We got back our Finding Place essays and I got an A minus with a note that she would have liked me to talk about my relationship with the sites and how researching them changed that relationship. I’m okay with the mark. I couldn't think of myself having any personal involvement with these places.

            After tutorial I said to Safia that I have never had a teacher tell me not to ask questions. She admitted that maybe it was her fault because of being overworked, sleep and light deprived and she apologized. I asked her if she wanted a hug and she opened her arms and we embraced.

            After class I went to the Help Desk at Robarts Library because I wasn't able to access U of T Webmail. I don't normally use it because all mail addressed to my U of T email address just gets channelled to my gmail account. But I’d sent a writing sample to Smaro Kamboureli as an audition for the Jack McLelland Writer in Residence Seminar starting in January and Smaro told me I needed to re-send it from my U of T email address. When I tried to do that however my password was rejected. At the Help Desk it took them five minutes to fix the glitch. Somehow I had opted out of Webmail and so I just had to opt back in.

            I hopped back on my bike and headed home. I stopped at Loblaws and bought grapes. There was only one nearly empty bag of black grapes and so I also got an expensive pack of scarlotta grapes.

            I had a late lunch of pork ribs and yogourt.

            I started typing my lecture notes.

            I had a potato, my last three pork ribs and some gravy for dinner while watching Zorro.

            This was the most intriguing story of the first season. Bernardo observes a blind beggar in the pueblo begging from the soldiers and the magistrate. But when they put money into his hat they also take out a note. Meanwhile the magistrate is organizing a horse race with an obstacle course and a large prize. When Zorro follows the blind man he is led to a meeting between the magistrate and other members of the Eagle Feather Brotherhood. He overhears that they are plotting to use the distraction of the horserace to steal gunpowder from the armoury for their overthrow of Los Angeles. As the commandant and all but a few soldiers are in the race, Zorro enters the race, beats the commandant to the halfway point and then calls for him to follow him. He and his men give chase to capture Zorro but he leads them into the pueblo just in time for them to catch the men stealing the gunpowder.