“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)
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.
[youtube_sc url=” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWW28eY5Du4″]
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.
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).
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.