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American Indian Humor. by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen. WARNING ABOUT INDIAN HUMOR, TABOOS, AND CENSORSHIP In selecting examples of Indian humor we have tried to be edgy, but not offensive, but consider the following:
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American Indian Humor by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen
WARNING ABOUT INDIAN HUMOR, TABOOS, AND CENSORSHIP In selecting examples of Indian humor we have tried to be edgy, but not offensive, but consider the following: CENSORSHIP FROM THE RIGHT: Blasphemy, Obscenity, Profanity, Swear Words, Vulgarity, Mention of Body Parts, and Body Functions CENSORSHIP FROM THE LEFT (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS): Age, Disabilities, Gender, Ethnicity, Belief System, and all other marginalizations. Ethnic humor tends to be in the vernacular. It is colloquial, and ungrammatical and unpretentious, but it is also often “vulgar” because it is in the language of the common people (compare “Vulgar Latin”). We’ve tried not to use offensive examples, and we hope we have succeeded, but remember that what is not offensive to one person might be very offensive to another person. We apologize in advance if any of our examples are offensive.
American Indian Comedy SlamVaughn Eaglebear, Charlie Hill, Howie Miller, Larry Omaha, Jr. Redwater, Jim Ruell & Mark Yaffee American Indian Comedy Slam: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+native+american+humor&view=detail&mid=E29AA4A31DCA585D50B4E29AA4A31DCA585D50B4&FORM=VIRE
James Many Horses signs his letters as “James Many Horses III.” He’s the only James Many Horses on the reservation, “but there is a certain dignity to any kind of artificial tradition.”
In 1988, Vine Deloria named his book Custer Died for Your Sins after a bumper sticker on the Sioux reservation which was designed to tease missionaries.
Seinfeld: Native-American Episode Seinfeld: Native-American Episode: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+american+indian+humor&&view=detail&mid=DBC87FF99595F4EA91C7DBC87FF99595F4EA91C7&rvsmid=351839FAAE27F20B3519351839FAAE27F20B3519&fsscr=0&FORM=VDFSRV
APACHE HUMOR • Apaches are fond of mocking white speech with high-pitched English exclamations like “I don’t like it, my friend. You don’t look good to me. Maybe you’re sick, need to eat some aspirins!.” • Such language contains much verbal play, code-switching, stock phrases, specific lexical items, recurrent sentence types, and modifications in pitch, volume, tempo, and voice quality.
ARAPAHO CONTRARIES • Arapaho contraries groan loudly when they lift light objects and pretend not to notice when lifting truly heavy objects.
CLOWNS • John Lowe writes about ritual clowns. • Dressed outrageously, often in rags and masks, they mimic the serious Kachina dancers, stumbling, falling, throwing or even eating filth or excrement, setting up rival fake-Gods and “worshipping” them in an exaggerated fashion, only to beat them a few seconds later. • Much of their humor is sexual, and some of the performers are permitted to grab spectators’ genitals.
CONTRARIES • Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man is based on Flaming Rainbow’s autobiographical Black Elk Speaks. Flaming Rainbow’s other name is John G. Neihardt. • In Little Big Man, a contrary clown arrives riding backwards on a horse with his body painted in motley colors. He says “Goodbye” for “Hello,” “I’m glad I did it!” for “I’m sorry.” He cleans himself with sand, and then exits by walking through the river.
In the summer, a contrary might pretend to feel cold and dress in buffalo robes. In the winter he pretends to be warm as he stands naked in the snow.
CORRECTIVE HUMOR • In the tribal community, humor is used to help people correct inappropriate behavior. • Indians often refer to their Indian brothers and sisters as being “apples.” • This is extending a long parade of ethnic capitulations with Whites by referring to blacks as Oreos, Asians as Bananas and Hispanics as Coconuts.
COWBOYS AND INDIANS • Sherman Alexie says that Indians make the best Cowboys in the game of Cowboys and Indians. • In Smoke Signals, Victor’s father tells Victor, “I remember the first time your mother and I danced. We were in this cowboy bar. We were the only real cowboys there despite the fact that we’re indians.”
Talking about Coyote stories, Yellowman said that they are not funny stories. The people laugh at the way Coyote does things, and at the way the story is told, but the story is not funny. • The stories are told because, If the children don’t hear the stories, they will grow up to be bad.
CREEK & MUSKOGEE HUMOR • Alexander Posey created a fictional ethnic “reporter” named Fus Fixico (which means “fearless bird”) to comment on the wrongs done to the Creek people by the U.S. Government. • Posey sometimes used the pen name “Chinnubbie Harjo,” who in Muskogee mythology was a trickster who could change his character.
DAKOTA CLOWNS • In Dakota cultures, clowning and exaggerating are deemed to be therapeutic.
“ENIT” • Throughout Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and the movie version, Smoke Signals, a very common Indian expression is “enit?” (a contraction for “isn’t it.”). • “Want to get something to eat?” • “Yeah.” • “How about a hamburger at Dick’s?” • “Sounds good, enit?”
HOPI HUMOR • In Hopi, the word for “clowning” is the same word as that used for making a point. • Hopi verbal humor relies heavily on puns, many of them sexual.
KOSHARI CONTRARIES • Koshari contraries talk backwards and know how to babble total nonsense.
MAYAN CONTRARIES • Mayan contraries pretend to be afraid of inconsequential events and fall to the ground when confronted by small obstacles.
NAVAJO HUMOR • In the Navajo culture, the first time an infant laughs, the family holds a celebration in which the child symbolically provides bread and salt to the family members and guests, signifying that he or she is now a part of the family.
Ojibway Humor: Drew Hayden Taylor Drew Hayden Taylor is Ojibway (First Nations of Canada), and he gives talks on the place of humor as a coping mechanism for Native Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGJss7uGcyQ
OPPRESSED PEOPLES • Vine Deloria says that Indians, like Jews, blacks, and other oppressed peoples, learn the rules and then invert them. • Indians would say that Custer was well dressed at the Little Big Horn. When the Sioux found his body, he had on an Arrow shirt. • He had boasted that he could ride through the entire Sioux nation. He was half right. He made it half-way through.
PAN INDIAN HUMOR • When Bill Moyers asked Louise Erdrich about the humor in her poems, in her short stories and in her Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks, Erdrich said that creating and enjoying ironic survival humor, often at the expense of the white oppressors, might be one of the few universal characteristics shared by all U.S. Indian tribes.
Vine Deloria observed that when the missionaries first came to America, they had all of the Bibles, and the Indians had all the land. • Now, the missionaries have all the land, and all the Indians have is the Bible. • Deloria says that in Indian affairs very little is accomplished without humor. Humor is used not only for entertainment but also for education and for spurring people to action.
Kenneth Lincoln explains that Indians revitalize old stories, scapegoat others and survive through laughter. • By doing this, they draw on millenia-old traditions of Trickster gods and holy fools, comic romances and epic boasts.
PARODY • In Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals there is a T-shirt advertising “Fry Bread Power.” • This celebrates the time when Victor’s mother magically fed a crowd that was twice as big as she had expected by raising her arms heavenward and solemnly ripping each piece of fry bread in half • In Victor’s tribe, this became known as “The Miracle of the Fry Bread.”
In Smoke Signals, The KREZ radio station has a traffic reporter who reports on the two or three cars he sees each day from the top of his broken-down Volkswagen van. • The enthusiastic announcer on KREZ shouts out, “It’s a great day to be indigenous!” • Meanwhile, back at home, Victor tells Thomas to shut off the TV, saying, “There’s only one thing more pathetic than Indians on TV and that’s Indians watching Indians on TV.”
PUEBLO CLOWNS • Clowns in Pueblo communities dress in rags and masks and mock the serious Kachina dancers by stumbling, falling down, throwing and sometimes miming the eating of excrement. • They also pretend to worship fake gods in an exaggerated manner.
RESERVATION QUIET • In Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals, Victor’s father left his mother. At night he would imagine his father’s motorcycle pulling up outside. He would rush around the house, pull on his shoes, socks, and coat and run outside to find an empty driveway. • It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.
RESERVATION REALISM • Alexie says that the stories he tells are not really true. They are the vision of one person looking at the lives of his family, and his entire tribe, so they are “biased, incomplete, exaggerated, deluded, and often just plain wrong.” He calls his stories “reservation realism.” • Alexie says that every indian in his book is dark skinned with long black hair. He calls it the Stepford Tribe of Indians.
Alexie says that on a reservation, Indian men who abandon their children are treated worse than white fathers who do the same thing. • It’s because white men have been doing that forever and Indian men have just learned how. That’s how assimilation can work.
RESERVATION TRAFFIC • In Alexie’s book, Adrian asks, “When did that…traffic signal quit working?” • “Don’t know.” • “…They better fix it. Might cause an accident.” • They both looked at each other, then looked at the traffic signal, and knew that only about one car passed by every hour.
A SOBER INDIAN • Alexie says that a sober Indian has infinite patience with a drunk Indian. There aren’t many who stay sober. Most spend time in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and everybody gets to know the routines. • “Hi, my name is Junior.” • “Hi, Junior,” everybody shouts in ironic unison. • “Hi, my name is Lester Falls Apart, and I’ve been drunk for twenty-seven straight years.”
Victor’s father in Alexie’s novel says, “even though the wreck was mostly my fault, he got the blame. I was sober and the cops couldn’t believe it. They never heard of a sober Indian getting in a car wreck.” • “Like Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
