Charlie Hill – Bitch Flicks

Charlie Hill is the most well-known Native American stand-up comedian that you’ve never heard of because his mainstream appearances on The Tonight Show and Richard Pryor’s TV show happened back in the 70s and 80s. He was a ground-breaking comic, the first American Indian on The Tonight Show, and considered by many contemporary Native comics to be the “godfather” of Native stand-up. On and Off the Res w/Charlie Hill (1999) is a one-hour documentary that uses humor to challenge the racism about Native peoples that is so pervasive in America, while also sharing the biography and story of Hill’s life and rise as a stand-up comic.

Normally, I would now insert a trailer, but this small independent documentary from Upstream Productions has no trailer or clips to share. It has an IMDB listing, but there is barely any information on it. To find anything out about Oneida Nation member Charlie Hill or this documentary, you have to search. Not only that, you have to know in advance what you are searching for. That puts you, kind reader, at a serious disadvantage if you didn’t even know Native Americans still exist, much less participate in the stand-up comedy circuit. This absence of information, the silence about real, living, Native peoples perpetuated by the American entertainment industry is indicative not only of American mainstream racism, but also of our shared ignorance. We don’t know, so when we are confronted by such a comic as Charlie Hill, we don’t know how to react. Surely, not with laughter?

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Hill’s accessible humor is on display in On and Off the Res, as well as his more serious commentary about stereotypical representations of Native Americans in mainstream American venues. The film includes interviews with his family, Dennis Banks, and Vine Deloria, who says early in the film, “Charlie’s valuable to the Indian community as a person out there on the edge, acting as a bridge between cultures.”

One moment included in this documentary is Hill’s presentation to the National Indian Education Convention in Tacoma, Wash. (1997) where he says,

“But America, it’s not really America, it’s Europe Junior when you really think about it. You know, when they start honoring the treaties and respecting the ladies in this nation, we get rid of sexism and racism, maybe we can call it America. But when you think about the history of this country, it never started ‘til 1492. We were here like billions of years like we was all on hold, like in freeze-frame or somethin’, like we weren’t movin’ (Hill freezes in place on stage), hup, it’s October 12, the white man’s here we better move (Hill starts a powwow chant).”

When Hill talks about his time in Catholic schools and being beaten by nuns, as he says they all were, he says, “We’re all reverberating from that. I learned to convert that into humor. I try to turn poison into medicine.”

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As the film shows, many of HIll’s televised appearances were on Canadian TV, which is sad. Here we had this wonderful comic in our midst making us laugh at our own racist tendencies and he wasn’t a fixture on American television. Think about that.

One clip from a Hill set includes one of my favorite Hill jokes that turns racist assumption on its own head. He relates the story of a man who yells out, “I don’t want to hear that crap, Injun, I’m an Amuurican, why don’t you go back where you came from!” Hill pauses for a second and then says, “So I camped in his backyard.”

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Vine Deloria explains, “What you do is a quick reverse of whatever the person says to you. You can find that in treaty records. Red Cloud at one point says, why don’t you put us on wheels? Then every time we make a treaty you can wheel us around. You get reports by treaty commissioners, you know these Indians know exactly what we’re after, we can’t deal with them. Gotta have someone else come in because they turned that thing quick. That’s a universal trait that you found all over the continent. Those people negotiating treaties had a sense of humor, a greater sense of irony, like some of the stand-ups, Rickles and others, just slice all day long. So you had that kind of humor Indian chiefs and diplomats used when they were negotiating.”

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Negotiating with the American government or the American people about Native peoples and their sovereignty and right to a non-stereotyped identity has been a challenge for these Nations since Europeans first arrived on these shores, and the challenge continues today. Unfortunately, Charlie Hill’s presence and voice exists now only in the record, for he walked on in Dec. 2013, a great loss to the comedy community and to us. Fortunately, we still have access to Hill’s sharp wit and comedic stylings through this documentary, on the American Indian Comedy Slam DVD, and on YouTube.

Deloria states toward the end of the documentary, “What I’ve tried to do, what Floyd and Charlie have tried to do, is kind of get the flavor of being an Indian in an Indian community out to a larger audience.”

For anyone interested in exploring other Native American stand-up comics, I encourage you to check out the following comedians and challenge your own assumptions through laughter.

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

“Being around Indian people, there’s always laughter even in times of stress, sorrow, sadness, there’s always that undercurrent of humor. There’s something spiritual. There’s always something funny about it because joviality, lightness, laughter, they say laughter is the language of God. . . We’re fighting hundreds of years of stereotypes just by the fact that we’re up here.”

— Charlie Hill (intro to American Indian Comedy Slam)

Charlie Hill (Oneida), the “godfather” of Native American stand-up comedy

In 2009, for the first time ever, six Indigenous stand-up comedians gathered for a 90-minute performance, hosted and filmed by Showtime for their LOL Comedy Series. The American Indian Comedy Slam was a groundbreaking effort on the part of these Native comics to widen their audience and appeal. I’m still waiting for a second Slam that will hopefully feature some Indigenous women comics, but this initial show was an important first step toward decolonizing American minds about the existence and humor of living Indigenous peoples of the North American continent.

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Native American stand-up comedy teases the audience, relies on self-deprecation for much of its humor, incorporates stories “built on the oral tradition,” and as a form of public discourse goes beyond entertainment into the persuasive realm by arguing for Native peoples’ inherent right to survival and sovereignty in the 21st century. As a result, Native American stand-up comedy potentially functions as a resistance strategy for cultural survival and as a criticism of mainstream culture, politics, and beliefs about First Nations peoples. Implicit in this resistance and criticism is praise for the living realities experienced by indigenous peoples. In fact, sometimes the praise and blame are explicit in Native American stand-up, as Howie Miller, Jim Ruel, Charlie Hill, Vaughn Eaglebear, JR Redwater, and Marc Yaffee show in their Comedy Slam performances.

The comics from left: Larry Omaha, JR Redwater, Jim Ruel Charlie Hill, Marc Yaffee, Vaughn Eaglebear, Howie Miller

While these Native American comedians are trained and practiced in Western stand-up forms, they are adept at mediating between the worlds of indigenous experiences and Euramerican ignorance of the mess, mayhem, and trauma of our shared histories. Native American stand-up comedy performances of today are commissioned and composed for a public purpose, as well as sharing an outsider status as simply entertainment rather than powerful and convincing forms of discourse that can create social and cultural change. These comedians are enacting more than just a superficial performance for entertainment, although that is certainly one of the objectives—to make people laugh.

At one point, Vaughn Eaglebear (Colville) comes onstage and says, “When I was in college, I took a Native American Studies class. . .I was the only Native American in the class. . .(long pause). . .I got a C.” At this point, the audience laughs sympathetically, to which Vaughn follows up with, “I should’ve cheated off that little Asian girl.”

Right after Vaughn, JR Redwater (Hunkpapa Lakota) first explains heyokas in his individual video interview introduction: “We have these special individuals in my culture that are called heyokas and they’re sacred clowns. We don’t have to take life so seriously, it’s okay to laugh and it’s okay to joke around, and so these people were revered in our culture to that level and so, I always believed that like, I’m a modern day heyoka.”

Each comic has his own video introduction during which he shares some personal history and background, as well as addressing the problem of stereotypes and the importance of comedy in reversing those ideas.

In Drew Hayden Taylor’s Me Funny (2005), Ian Ferguson writes, “The most surprising thing for most non-Natives is that Indians are funny in the first place” (127). Darby Li Po Price pre-dates Feguson’s sentiments in “Laughing Without Reservation: Indian Standup Comedians” (1998) from his very first line: “Contrary to the dominant conception of Indians as humorless, stoic, and tragic, humor and comedy have always been central to Native American cultures” (American Indian Culture and Research Journal 255). Cherokee intellectual Jace Weaver takes up the existence of Native peoples, writing in his introduction to That the People Might Live, “It is important that Native cultures be seen as living, dynamic cultures” (8) as opposed to the colonialist assumptions of cultural stasis and death: “It is a vision of the ‘Indian as corpse,’ and the stasis box is only a thinly disguised coffin. An extinct people do not change. Their story is complete” (18). In America especially, we have become disturbingly comfortable with this idea and perhaps this might be one of the reasons why, when we are confronted with Native American comedians exploring issues that touch on this sacred assumption, that we’re not quite sure how to react. Surely, not with laughter?! Thomas King actually offers a wise perspective on this, writing, “There are probably cultural differences in humour, but I suspect what makes Native people laugh is pretty much what makes all people laugh. . .We are at our best when we laugh at ourselves” (Me Funny 181).

Jim Ruel (Ojibwe) can be followed on Twitter @nativecomedian

If more people experience the comic stories of American Indian comedians where serious ideas are planted through the back door and not the frontal lobe, then over time American conceptions of Native peoples may change. For instance, one outcome might be that more people realize that indigenous peoples are still present and visible and are not vanished relics of the past. And quite frankly, getting these ideas through stand-up comedy is a lot more fun than reading a history textbook. Laughter opens up the brain and unlocks the back door, but even when laughter isn’t front and center, the ideas still penetrate.

Please consider watching the American Indian Comedy Slam, sharing the performances with friends and colleagues, and if you teach, incorporating this 90-minute movie into your class. My students love these comedians because they are accessible, even when they are giving us that spiritual spanking that they say we Americans deserve.

Watch the entire show for free: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi278898969?ref_=tt_pv_vi_1

Note: Charlie Hill of the Oneida Nation, considered by many of today’s Native American stand-up comics to be the “godfather” of Native American stand-up comedy, walked on in December 2013. Read Vaughn Eaglebear’s thank you letter to Charlie Hill at Indian Country Today Media Network.

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

Tag: Charlie Hill

Turning Poison into Medicine: ‘On and Off the Res w/Charlie Hill’

‘American Indian Comedy Slam’: “Fighting hundreds of years of stereotypes”