Rita Moreno

            As I was not limping when I got up on Monday morning I felt like I was almost flying after fifteen days of painful steps. During song practice I was not only able to stand balanced on both feet but I could also dance again.

            I finished working out the chords to "Zig-Zig avec toi" by Serge Gainsbourg and I ran through it in French. It’s a fun song to play.

            I tried to take a siesta from 9:30 to 11:00 but there was whole crew banging, crashing and drilling downstairs. They had also brought a radio that was turned up to maximum volume so they could hear above their hammers and electric screwdrivers classics from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Sometimes I could feel someone hammering centimetres below my head and I felt my bed jump a couple of times.

            As I was getting ready to leave for school I met Benji in the hallway. He said that the workers downstairs have just started renovating the place for Popeyes. But I could also hear my landlord through the floor working with his man and talking in Sri Lankan. So maybe the demolition and the renovation are happening at the same time.

            It was a much warmer day than I’d expected and so I was overdressed for my ride downtown. I could have worn my spring gloves and one less scarf. I was able to put the arch of my foot on the pedal now that the wooden spike had been pulled out.

            There were three young women chatting in the lecture hall when I arrived. One of them asked to use the other’s little scissors but she said that hers had been confiscated by security at a Raptors game because they were considered to be a weapon. After the game she tried to get them back but they told her that since she’d surrendered them she couldn’t retrieve them.

            As he began the lecture White said he had a head cold that was really just allergies. A head cold can’t be “really just allergies". You could have one or the other or both but one can't be the other.

            The lecture was on the chapter on Health and Well-Being from Dale Belanger’s Ways of Knowing.

            It begins with the case of Jordan Rivers Anderson from Norway House, Manitoba. He was born with a rare muscular disorder and was in hospitals from birth. He was transferred to Winnipeg for treatment. Doctors said he should be in a special foster care home near Norway House but the federal and provincial governments squabbled with one another over who was going to pay for Jordan’s treatment and transportation. He died two years later in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of five. His health care would have been paid for if he’d been white or off reserve. In 2017 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issued a ruling called Jordan’s Principle that states that whether provincial or federal, whichever health service is approached first by an Indigenous person must provide them with care. One service can work out reimbursement from the other after the treatment if such issues arise.

            Trudeau’s turned Indigenous Affairs into two separate services. Indigenous Services now covers health and had approved over 19,700 Jordan’s Principle cases by the end of the 2017-2018 fiscal year.

            Indigenous people in Canada are denied basic health care.

            My research: The infant mortality rate on reserves is double the national average.

            Life expectancy fifteen years shorter among Inuit.

            Suicide rates among aboriginal youth are eleven times higher than the national average.

            In some communities the suicide rate of youth under fifteen is fifty times higher.

            TB occurs forty times more often on reserves.

            Harper’s government closed or cut funding for ten aboriginal health research groups. 

            The health inequality between Indigenous and white people is greater in Canada than in the United States.

            As far as I have been able to uncover, health care is only free for US aboriginals at special Indian Health Service facilities, which don’t always exist in urban areas. 

            There are assumptions on the part of health care workers that a sick Indigenous person is an addict.

            He says food is twice as expensive in Canada and of poor quality.

            The expensive part is probably true but Canadian food tends to be of a higher quality than in the States. The Canadian nutritional guidelines are better and Canadians tend to make better choices. You have a better chance of eating hormone free meat in a Canadian restaurant and there are stricter rules about food ingredients in general here. I think White prefers junk food like chips and pop and those kinds of food do taste better in the States because there’s more unhealthy junk in them.

            Campuses are opening food pantries.

            Diabetes among Indigenous people has been epidemic for almost a hundred years.

            A 2016 study showed that the lifetime risk of diabetes among male first nations in Alberta is 20% higher than non-First Nations for men and 40% higher for women. This means that eight out of ten First Nations people will get diabetes in their life compared to five out of ten non First Nations people.

            17.2% of First Nations people on reserves have type-two diabetes. Diabetes prevalence is three to five times higher than the general population. First Nations tend to be affected by diabetes in middle age while for the general population it is a disease of the elderly. Since First Nations women get diabetes during reproductive age there is a greater chance of giving birth to children with diabetes.

            But diabetes is only 2% higher in BC. It’s twice as high in Alberta but among the James Bay Cree it’s 14% higher.

            In 1940 diabetes was rare among the aboriginal population of North America. It began to increase rapidly in 1950 and is now epidemic.

            He said there was a raid on Tyendinaga last night.

            He said Wet’suwet’en was also raided again this morning but I think he’s talking about a rail blockade in Northern BC in support of Wet’suwet’en where fourteen people were arrested.

            There are vigilantes calling for violence against peaceful protestors. I think he means there are right wing groups on social media calling for vigilante attacks on protestors. They aren’t really vigilantes if their actions only exist in comment sections.

            Everybody thinks that Indigenous people cannot be social drinkers.

            Indigenous people do not metabolize alcohol differently than white people and they don’t have a higher prevalence of known risk genes. The reasons for more incidences of alcoholism among Indigenous people are related to poverty and trauma.

            Most accept that European diseases killed off 85% of the Indigenous population.

            By the late 1500s the Spanish had brought diseases that spread north before the French, Dutch and English arrived. The diseases affected the densely populated areas of Mesoamerica more than the nomadic tribes of the north because they would only wipe out small groups that were isolated from one another.

            The coronavirus is changing.

            The coronavirus can morph quickly from mild to deadly.

            Weaponized smallpox in blankets.

            During Pontiac’s uprising in 1763 Fort Pitt was being besieged. Among the settlers taking shelter in the fort smallpox had broken out. When two chiefs came to the fort to negotiate peace they were given two blankets and a handkerchief from the smallpox hospital.

            Indigenous people helped Europeans with scurvy.

            What has caused diabetes among Indigenous people? Indigenous people lack the enzymes to break down flour, sugar, lactose and white rice. Traditional food sources were wiped out, reserve life caused health problems, and ceremonies were suppressed.

            Obesity is high among Indigenous people in the States.

            Obesity rates among First Nations of Canada tend to be higher on reserve than off except in Alberta where they are either the same or lower. The average obesity rate among Indigenous people in Canada is about 18% higher than non-Indigenous people.

            In the States the Indigenous obesity rate 30% higher among adolescents and 50% higher among adults.

            Healthy food is expensive.

            There is a scientific basis for Indigenous medicine.

            Aspirin comes from willow bark. Indigenous people used it but so did Europeans before contact.

            He spent a lot of the lecture talking about what he likes to eat and how he’s unhealthy because he’s fat.

            The oldest living people maintained a garden. It provides healthy food and good exercise.

            He says white corn digests more slowly and is healthier than sweet corn. In general the only difference is pigment, but yellow corn has more beta-carotene, which turns into vitamin A during digestion. Sweet corn is also an antioxidant. He claims sweet corn has no nutritional value. He’s full of shit. Sweet corn is rich in vitamins and nutrients.

            We are disconnected from our food.

            He talks about not having a microwave and that so much supermarket food is for the microwave. I tell him that one can cook all microwavable food without the microwave.

            There is always food at Indigenous gatherings but also dancing.

            He says the recommended eating times in North America are unnatural.

            He talks more about the food he likes like fiddleheads and bacon wrapped asparagus.

            He related arguments he has with his dietician.

            A Tim Hortons large double double has six teaspoons of sugar.

            Western medicine seeks to cure rather than heal. Healing tries to get to the root of the problem. The question is does it really get there or does it think it gets there?

            The student who sits directly behind me said that doctors stopped treating arthritis with diet because it was so difficult to get people to change their eating habits.

            There’s a pill for everything.

            Indigenous communities accept the mystery of things while western culture attempts to solve everything.

            Health problems can arise from troubled relationships. People panic because they haven’t received a quick response on social media. We are distanced from one another in the modern world. That doesn’t explain why people are healthier now than they used to be.

            He asks how we interpret dreams. What if you dream someone is chasing you? It means you wish to stay ahead and to have your problems behind you.

            Poison ivy is spread by mowing. The treatment for poison ivy is calamine lotion. Someone showed him a plant that treats poison ivy. But he couldn’t find the plant later. He says it was only after he asked permission, offered tobacco and gave thanks that the plant revealed itself to him. The plant was playing hard to get. I rolled my eyes so hard it caused an earthquake. He’s talking about witch hazel, which if you know what it looks like and where it grows you can find it without any hocus-pocus. It can’t make itself invisible to avoid you because you are ungrateful.

            If you are healed you become part of the community of healing.

            If you take too much you disrupt the balance of things.

            Chicken pox was deadly at the time of first contact. He says chicken pox came from chickens but there is no evidence of that. The name probably derived from “Itching pox”.

            Diseases that can cross species include the bird flu, Lyme disease, AIDS, SARS, swine flu and rabies.

            The student four rows back with the tattoos in her hands claimed TB comes from slaughterhouses. Studies show that the original form appeared in cattle about 40,000 years ago and jumped to people that domesticated cattle in the Horn of Africa about 10,000 years later.

            He claims Indigenous people did not domesticate animals. The Aztecs and Mayans domesticated turkeys, ducks and dogs for food. The Incas domesticated llamas, alpacas and guinea pigs.

            People plant corn too close and use GMOs. Some GMOs are to resist pesticides.

            They are planning to dump sewage in the St Lawrence near Montreal. They dumped it in the late fall of 2018. Studies showed that not dumping it would be worse until they fix their sewage treatment facilities. Studies also say that it will not harm the fish population. They are pumping it deep in the river where it is too cold to breed bacteria.

            He says most pipelines run through Indigenous communities. I can’t find any confirmation that’s true.

            Las Vegas is powered by coal mined on and pumped from Indigenous land.

            Treaties are more important than the US Constitution. I think the exact wording is that treaties are the supreme law of the land but they probably didn’t mean treaties with Indigenous nations when they said that.

            Canada’s raids on Wet’suwet’en and Tyendinaga are in violation of UNDRIP.

            Somebody drove through a blockade but they were not charged.
            If this is the guy that drove through in Regina, it does not seem to have been a vigilante action. He saw a gap between protesters and started through. When protesters surrounded his car he got scared because his son was with him in the car and he just went through. No one was injured.

            If it’s the situation when the truck driver slightly injured a protestor in Manitoba, there may be charges after an investigation.

            The Mohawk maintaining blockades call themselves “Land protectors”.

            The tattooed student asked if it’s correct to say “Mohawk”. The Mohicans called the Kanien’keha:ka “Maw Unk Lin” but the Dutch heard it as Mohawk. White says it’s okay to say Mohawk.

            I would add every language has a different name for the people of other nations that they’ve associated with for a long time. The Germans for example don’t call themselves Germans.

            Life expectancy of Indigenous people in the United States is four years less than the national average. In Canada it’s a little over five years less. But the studies weren’t done in the same way.

            He talked more about his diet, his diabetes and his cravings.

            The tattooed student mentioned Indigenous women being water protectors. This renewal of an Indigenous tradition came out of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and spread throughout North America to the locations of other disputes.

            She said that she reports people for racist comments on social media all the time.

            A student further back says he was censored on Twitter and Instagram.

            White said some Indigenous people were censored on Twitter for quoting the term, “Merciless Indian Savages” as it was used in the Declaration of Independence. 

            On Saturday February 21 in the town of Seneca Falls, New York, tribal law enforcement officers acting on the orders of Cayuga First Nation leader Clint Halftown came in with guns drawn and bulldozed a daycare centre, a store, a school and several other buildings controlled by tribe members led by clan mothers that oppose his leadership on the reserve. The properties that were destroyed were occupied four years ago by the clan mothers group. Halftown is the federally recognized leader but the Great Law states that clan mothers have the power to select or remove chiefs. Halftown inherited leadership after the death of the previous chief in 2004 but clan mothers selected their own chiefs and claimed Halftown was stripped of power. When those opposed to Halftown’s leadership tried to vote him out in 2005 the Bureau of Indian Affairs said not enough people voted and so he stayed in power.

            There were only five students in tutorial.

            I complained that the course should be pointing out the difference between Indigenous health care and regular health care. Safia seems to think it would take an entire course to do that. But I found that Indigenous people use provincial health care but can also access a plan for prescription drugs through the federal government. It only gets complicated for conditions or health needs not covered by provincial plans.

            Safia said that because of limited time we would only get five minutes each for our media presentations and so we were not to read our entire papers.

            The WHO recognizes colonization as a cause of Indigenous health problems such as low life expectancy, diabetes and heart disease. These health problems would not exist if they could still be hunter-gatherers.

            In the 2011 census 28.9% of Indigenous people had no secondary school compared to 12.1 non-Indigenous. My research shows that the percentage of Indigenous people with high school diplomas is almost the same as non-Aboriginal people. About half of Indigenous people between 25 and 64 had postsecondary qualification. 14,4% had trade certificates, 20.3% had a college diploma and 26.5% had a university degree.

            Housing for the James Bay Cree in Attawapiskat First Nation is like that of a third world country. They have to live in trailers with holes in them. 85% of homes have been officially declared unfit for human habitation. By contrast the Cree on the Quebec side are thriving. 

            Safia said her first jobs in Canada involved telephone work. She worked for the Liberal party asking people whom they were voting for. She also asked people their annual income and one Indigenous man said he made $3000 a year.

            A little over half of Indigenous people off reserve are employed.

            The death rates of Indigenous children from unintentional injuries are three to four times higher.

            Suicide rates for First Nations are five to seven times higher. It’s actually three times higher.

            Suicide rates for Inuit youth are eleven times higher than the national average.

            The Medicine Chest Clause was only in Treaty Six.

            Healing ceremonies were barred.

            Self-determination is the key.

            An environmental group claims De Beers failed to report mercury poisoning in water from their mine.

            I volunteered to go first in our media presentations. I told Safia I have training in public speaking from having been a panhandler. She asked if the cops ever arrested me. I said they couldn’t arrest me for begging and so they planted drugs on me. She said, “Now you know what the cops are like!” I responded, “Now I know? I’ve known for a long time!”

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home where I bought a bag of cherries, four bags of grapes, a pint of strawberries, and a carton of soymilk.

            I had a late lunch of cold pork souvlaki and yogourt.

            I took an hour-long siesta.

            I worked on typing my lecture notes.

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one for dinner with a potato and gravy while watching the second made-for-TV Zorro movie of 1961.

            This story begins with Cuchillo and his men trying to stage another nighttime robbery in Los Angeles but Zorro foils them again. The next day Diego goes to the tavern where he sits with Cuchillo, who begins sketching him. He draws Diego in Zorro’s mask and hat. Bernardo “accidentally” ruins the drawing with food before anyone can see it. He also accidentally gets food in the face of one of Cuchillo’s men, who wants satisfaction. Diego says he is responsible for Bernardo and so he fights and beats the man. Later Cuchillo and his men rob the tavern and ride out of town. Garcia and his men give chase but Cuchillo and his men double back to Los Angeles where they try again to steal but Zorro stops them and duels with Cuchillo until the soldiers come. Later Cuchillo and his men occupy the home of Diego and his father. Cuchillo says that either Diego or Alejandro has to remain in a chair at all times as insurance. Garcia comes to tell Diego that the ship from Boston has arrived with the money for the hides. Cuchillo has Diego and Alejandro tied up and leaves Chato to guard them as he leaves with his men to steal the money. He tells Chato that when he hears his gunshot he can kill them both. The shot is fired but as Chato prepares to kill them Bernardo rattles the door of the secret passage. As Chato investigates Bernardo pulls him through and knocks him out. Diego and his father are freed and Zorro goes after Cuchillo. The wagon carrying the money is stolen but Zorro gets it back and drives it to Los Angeles. Cuchillo follows and they duel again. Cuchillo is knocked out by a falling ladder. The next day Cuchillo’s men are all sent ahead to Mexico so Cuchillo can’t lead them. Cuchillo is then escorted on horseback with his hands tied behind him. Chulita exits the tavern and Don Alejandro goes to console her. She says, “Pardon me but I must not be late” and then she goes to stand in the middle of the street. Alejandro is puzzled since there is no stage due. Suddenly Cuchillo, with his hand free comes riding up and sweeps her onto his horse. Later as Cuchillo and Chulita are riding along Zorro drops a rope around both of them. He leads them to a shrine where a priest is standing with an open Bible. Zorro says, “A married man does not have time to be a bandito.” Cuchillo says, “This is not what I had in mind!” Then he gives up and kisses Chulita.

            Chulita was played by Rita Moreno, who is one of the few performers to have won an Oscar (for West Side Story), an Emmy (for The Muppet Show and The Rockford Files), a Tony (for The Ritz) and a Grammy for The Electric Company Album). She said Marlon Brando was a better lover than Elvis. I could have guessed that.