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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-flagellation 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 hardships. 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 written form is not a result of the former. For thousands of years Indigenous peoples 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 communities. Jokes and storytelling, but also, for example, the creation stories, are a means of passing down knowledge to the younger generations. These creation « 92 «
