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KRISZTINA Kopó There were a lot of adjectives. Lacking among them was funny. Savage irony and morbid humor did sometimes enter the picture as a kind of self-flagellation device for whites, but on the whole Natives were treated by almost everyone with the utmost gravity, as if they were either too awe-inspiring as blood-curdling savages or too sacrosanct in their status of holy victim to allow of any comic reactions either to them or by them. Furthermore, nobody ever seems to have asked them what if anything they found funny. The Native as presented in non-Native writing was singularly lacking in a sense of humor; sort of like the “good” woman of Victorian fiction, who acquired at the hands of male writers the same kind of tragic-eyed, long-suffering solemnity.” This insensitivity of the whites toward any understanding of Native humor began to change and show signs of progress with the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s. These changes involved actions resulting in decolonization and self-determination, which ultimately led to Native writers creating literature with humor as its basic feature. This sparked the development of quite a few Native theater groups throughout North America."' The new literary works written by Native playwrights, however, seem to have caught the non-Natives by surprise, causing bewilderment and incredulity. As Margaret Atwood comments: Things are changing. Natives are now writing fiction, poetry and plays, and some of the literature being produced by them is both vulgar and hilarious. A good many stereotypes are hitting the dust, a few sensibilities are in the process of being outraged. The comfortable thing about a people who do not have a literary voice, or at least not one you can hear or understand, is that you never have to listen to what they are saying about you.” The “you” that Atwood refers to is the non-Native white Caucasian. For a white European scholar/critic studying Native humor, the realization that this theme is loaded with pitfalls of all kinds is rather unnerving. Why? Native humor is unlike American, Canadian, English, Irish or even Hungarian humor. In trying to understand Native humor one should comprehend its essence, and its roots. Like any form of humor, it can heal and release stress, and depression. According to Cynthia Lindquist Mala, “being able to laugh is a way to cope that promotes healing and unity. Indian humor is rooted in life lessons. It means laughing at the myriad of tests thrown at us since 10 Margaret Atwood, A Double-Bladed Knife, Subversive Laughter in Two Stories by Thomas King, in W. H. New (ed.), Native Writers and Canadian Writing, Vancouver, UBC, 1992, 243-244. 1! Diane Debenharn, Native People in Contemporary Canadian Drama, Canadian Drama, 142, 1988, 137. 2 Atwood, A Double-Bladed Knife, 244. + 292 +
