The Power of Humor in Indigenous Activism

Native activists are using comedy to fight cultural invisibility and structural oppression.

Native comedy has been around since, well, the beginning. The roots of Native humor are deep and structurally meaningful鈥攁nd well-known in Native communities. In his pathbreaking (and very funny) 1969 book, , the attorney, activist, and former National Congress of American Indians executive director Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) was one of the first to write about Native humor.

Humor in Native culture, according to Deloria, has never been simply about entertainment and fun, but about governance and organizational styles and getting things done鈥攂ut also, an irresistible response to absurd levels of tragedy. In his book, he recalled singing 鈥淢y Country 鈥橳is of Thee鈥� at a Native conference and the room breaking into laughter as they realized that their fathers most certainly did die at the hands of the Pilgrims鈥攁 hilariously dark twist on the lines 鈥渓and where my fathers died 鈥� land of the Pilgrims鈥� pride.鈥�

Well before the 鈥淲hite invasion,鈥� Native communities used teasing and ridicule as a form of functional rebuke when people seemed to go against the broad consensus of a tribe; comedy became an important quality for effective leaders.

Comedy, not surprisingly given its structural functions in Native communities, is also found in Indigenous activism.

Comedy, not surprisingly given its structural functions in Native communities, is also found in Indigenous activism. In 1969, in one of the most successful and well-known contemporary Native-led uprisings, activists seized control of Alcatraz Island, occupying it for months and demanding rightful land be returned as the had promised. As attention grew and allies and Natives arrived on-site, the poet John Trudell (Santee-Dakota) 鈥渨rote a satirical manifesto that conveys the feelings of the occupation,鈥� as Kliph Nesteroff wrote in his book (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Trudell was rewarded for his efforts with an FBI file that said, in part, 鈥淗e is extremely eloquent鈥攖herefore extremely dangerous.鈥� Humor was embedded in the resistance itself.

The comedy group, the 1491s are pictured on stage. *Photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images*

Cut to Native activism in the present day, where Crystal Echo Hawk, , , and a network of Indigenous artists are fighting cultural invisibility and structural oppression, and, in its place, asserting their identities. They are focused both on the power nucleus of Hollywood and on making and disseminating their own stories, using the participatory media tools of the digital age, striving to change the image and treatment of Native people by disrupting the narrative created by others. Comedy is meaningful here, too, says Echo Hawk: 鈥淭here are times in our communities when we really faced some incredibly difficult challenges, and there are moments where dark humor is alive and well because it鈥檚 sometimes just the way that we cope. It鈥檚 the way that we are expressing our resiliency.鈥�

Ryan Redcorn attends FX’s *Reservation Dogs* Premiere at River Spirit Resort on July 29, 2022 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. *Photo by Michael Noble Jr./Getty Images*

As the 1491s鈥� Ryan RedCorn says, 鈥淎lmost all of my actions are designed to work in service of social justice. They are often heavily disguised.鈥� Incognito activism is where comedy gets to shine. And so it was that a group of us鈥擭atives and allies, comedians and activists鈥攁rrived in Oklahoma in the summer of 2019 to see what we might create together. Our task: imagine and produce new comedy to agitate Native invisibility and push against long-standing doors of oppression.

: Creating Comedy for Native Activism

The drive from Tulsa to the Osage Nation reservation in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is long, flat, and blanketed with tall grass. Highway signs fall behind as prairie land gives way to smaller winding rural roads, and if there are prominent street signs to mark the path, I have missed them because we are fully trusting our guide, Ryan RedCorn, comedian and son of the Osage Nation鈥檚 assistant chief, Raymond Red Corn. RedCorn knows every detail and turn of this place, his lifelong home. The night before, after dinner in old downtown Pawhuska, we looked up from the bottom steps of the old courthouse where most cases of hundreds of murdered Osage鈥攌illed by envious Whites for their oil claims in the 1920s鈥攔emained unresolved, covered up by the FBI in one of the most scandalous little-known stories of violence perpetrated on Native peoples.

Stuffed into two SUVs, we are a noisy and funny (literally) little caravan: nine joke-cracking comedians鈥攈alf of them Native, half non-Native鈥攁nd me, making our way through the plains of Oklahoma on a hot June afternoon.

Crystal Echo Hawk attends *The Hollywood Reporter’s* Raising Our Voices on April 20, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California. *Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for The Hollywood Reporter*

Our visit was the culminating event in a remarkable week spent co-creating comedy between Native and non-Native comedians, alongside Crystal Echo Hawk and an assembled group of Native leaders, activists, and experts. When Echo Hawk and our team discussed making comedy together as social justice strategy, she knew immediately that she wanted to host our session on-site in Oklahoma. The learning and the immersive experience, in her mind, would be totally different than in a writers鈥� room in Los Angeles or New York, where this kind of work usually germinates. She was right. I learned more about Native culture as an invited guest than I had in a lifetime of living in this country, and I know the other non-Natives in our group shared my perspective.

As RedCorn reflected, 鈥淚t鈥檚 important to understand the geographic context. I live in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, but usually the people writing about Native people or rural Americans don鈥檛 live here. It鈥檚 a double uphill battle for people trying to write these characters in these spaces. There are so many misrepresentations of people in these spaces. 鈥� These stories are totally cut off to [writers鈥� rooms] because they don鈥檛 know the rules of those worlds.鈥�

We have gathered to co-create comedy together for the first time, our effort part of IllumiNative鈥檚 ongoing cultural activism and its first official foray into leveraging comedy. Our group is a real who鈥檚 who of hot Native comedy talent鈥擩oey Clift, Adrianne Chalepah, Bobby Wilson, Ryan RedCorn鈥攁nd some of the best non-Native comedy improvisers and sketch writers and performers in the country: Sebastian Conelli, Shannon O鈥橬eill, Johnny McNulty, Rachel Pegram. Bethany Hall, as always, is our comedy facilitator.

We begin our week together with a full day of information gathering and presentations from Echo Hawk and other Native leaders who work in and for their communities; the is the heart of our session, and there is a huge amount of information to take in. As Adrianne Chalepah summarized the challenge, 鈥淲e have to know what we鈥檙e talking about if we鈥檙e going to write jokes. We鈥檙e not just doing it for laughs, but community is on the line, and we have to find something relatable in all of that information.鈥�

Producing comedy for activism purposes is a tricky balance when it comes to Native invisibility issues, as Echo Hawk puts it, because our work has to resonate strongly with Native audiences (and they are well aware of their cultural invisibility, as Chalepah wryly pointed out) even while it reaches non-Native audiences. Non-Native people, after all, are the ones who hold and perpetuate destructive misinformation at worst, or, at best, simply don鈥檛 know anything at all about Native peoples, culture, and lived experiences; the comedy has to be funny to both an inside and an outside audience. And if we are following the open artistic process of comedy鈥攖hat is, not predeciding exactly what ideas should be developed, what facts to reinforce鈥攚e don鈥檛 know exactly where this will go.

Following the serious information transfer, the first order of (comedy) business is an exercise in which every comedian in the room shares a story about how and where they grew up: Who were the people and characters in their lives? What is memorable? Where does their comedy derive from? It is alternatively hilarious and serious, but it definitely breaks the ice. Conelli has us on the floor laughing as he recounts stories about 鈥淯ncle Rocky鈥�: a ham-handed, gregarious Staten Island man who would sit in his work truck to eat massive sandwiches in between shifts. (Quips RedCorn later, 鈥淚 need to see better Staten Island representation in comedy!鈥�) But we have to address the truly meta idea in the room itself: Non-Native comedians don鈥檛 know much of anything about Native culture or lived experiences. We have to break the ice and allow people to share their stories and ask questions.

An informal session鈥斺€渋s this racist or is this funny?鈥濃€攈as everyone cracking up. It is hard to imagine this level of levity and honesty happening in 鈥渟trategy鈥� rooms for activist work, but once the comedians are able to hear each other鈥檚 stories and questions, it is an open playing field. As Bobby Wilson pointed out later, the really funny ideas didn鈥檛 start to emerge until all of the comedy writers had created a really funny comfort zone together, once non-Native folks 鈥済ot past all the guilt of not knowing,鈥� as he put it. If the room had stayed 鈥渃areful鈥� as people tried not to offend one another, the funny would have been suppressed. Joey Clift said, 鈥淭he stories we told, the things we shared with each other, that鈥檚 where the light-bulb moments happened.鈥�

Was it hard to find the comedy amid traumatic factual information? Not really, particularly given the long-standing role of humor in Native communities; the writers arrived with plenty of it. As Chalepah put it, 鈥淲hen you are dealing with systems of oppression, the comedy writes itself. It鈥檚 easy to find the punchlines because we can see what鈥檚 wrong with that picture.鈥� The comedy balance was really important to find, though: 鈥淧eople who are never going to seek out Native American facts never will unless we do it like this,鈥� said Conelli. 鈥淚t was important to make the comedy really funny rather than to work on the social justice topics so heavily.鈥� By the end of the co-creation week, the comedians came up with easily 40 different ideas: TV shows, films, sketches, jokes, social media videos. On the final day, they pitched their final loglines, all centering Native joy and hilarity. Notably, none focused on the trauma or violence reflected in years and years of American culture鈥攂ut all were designed to blast a hole into the absurdity of distorted Native tropes and celebrate Native truth and stories.

Excerpted from (NYU Press, 2023) by Caty Borum.

Caty Borum is executive director of the Center for Media & Social Impact; associate professor of communication at American University; author of聽Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change; and co-author, with Lauren Feldman, of聽A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in 大象传媒.