Native comedy has been around since, well, the beginning. The roots of Native humor are deep and structurally meaningful—and well-known in Native communities. In his pathbreaking (and very funny) 1969 book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, 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—but also, an irresistible response to absurd levels of tragedy. In his book, he recalled singing “My Country ’Tis of Thee” 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—a hilariously dark twist on the lines “land where my fathers died … land of the Pilgrims’ pride.”
Well before the “White invasion,” Native communities used teasing and ridicule as a form of functional rebuke when people seemed to go against the broad consensus of
— source yesmagazine.org | Caty Borum | May 9, 2023