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CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS
ignorance. Margaret Atwood also comments on non-Natives’ insensitivity to
and misconception of Indigenous culture and their lack of humour: “[s]avage
irony and morbid humour did sometimes enter the picture as a kind of self-flag¬
ellation device for whites, but on the whole Natives were treated by almost
everyone with the utmost gravity. [...] The Native as presented in non-Native
writing was singularly lacking in a sense of humour” (243-244).
Native humour is a rather precarious theme because it is unlike American
or English humour, or that of other nations. This is simply because each nation
has its own distinctive approach to and understanding of humour. And to
understand a nation’s humour one must comprehend the roots of its culture
and history. It is widely acknowledged that humour can heal and release stress.
Cynthia Lindquist Mala states that, “being able to laugh is a way to cope that
promotes healing and unity. Indian humour is rooted in life lessons. It means
laughing at the myriad of tests thrown at us since colonization” (“Very Good
Medicine”). Humour, then, enabled Indigenous people to survive their hard¬
ships. Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. also comments that, “when a people can
laugh at themselves and laugh at others and hold all aspects of life together
without letting anyone drive them to extremes, then it would seem to me that
the people can survive” (169).
Through humour, Native comedians and writers sensitize their people to
the still existing stereotypes and the major social-political issues prevailing
within their own communities. Humour, then, strengthens the community,
heals, and is ultimately a form of survival. Native humour is ingrained in Native
culture and has been present since times immemorial. Laughter, thus, is a form
of cultural survival, a means of coping with life, which also helped Indigenous
people to survive colonization, strengthen togetherness, and belonging within
their communities. Native humour has been transmitted orally for centuries
from generation to generation. And within this oral culture, humour uses
specific gestures, mimicry, and body language, which do not necessarily come
across in a written form. Native culture remains an oral culture, and the writ¬
ten form is not a result of the former. For thousands of years Indigenous peo¬
ples have “known the land and created stories from one generation to the next
for so long, updating them at each necessary step. These stories of the land and
history have meant survival” (Joudry 95).
Indigenous people survived the ordeals of the past; Tomson Highway defines
their traumatic historical past as “a dark and lonely road, a frightening one,
filled with pitfalls, that almost killed us, as, indeed, it did do some of us” (975).
Indigenous comedians and writers use humour to sensitize their people to the
still existing stereotypes and the major socio-political problems in their com¬
munities. Jokes and storytelling, but also, for example, the creation stories, are
a means of passing down knowledge to the younger generations. These creation
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