#61 - From Trauma to Teasing: The Epigenetics of Indigenous Humor - Guest: Kasey Nicholson - Tribal Research Specialist: The Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Kasey Nicholson (00:00):
What are you guys doing going on here?

Shandin Pete (00:08):
We're just waiting for old Aaron to log in

Salisha Old Bull (00:13):
on Aaron waiting on Aaron

be painting

tea peas,

pee pees, yeah,

enunciate that a little better.

He pees with the tea.

Pees, yeah. Man, where you at right now, in

my apartment or townhouse, in Billings,
Billings, Billings, billets,Billings.

Anybody ever say that anymore? Billing that
billings

in your PI editor, in my peer to tear and

billing some I think some of them still do.
I'll go build, go shop bills andgo to mall and shop at Bent
she'sbeen asking, and he probably
still says it, yeah, but I'm

gonna ask him right when he comes on, yeah?
I'm gonna ask him to say itYeah, without prompting. He's
gonna say, oh, what? Buildings,yeah, yeah. He's not gonna do
it. He's got to be around abunch of crows. Then he'll
switch. He'll code switch.
That's

always, hey, happen? That's what we all do. I
know, man, I don't I don't speakBella unless I'm around Belknap.
Nobody else gets it, nobody elsegets it, and no one else knows
how to speak it. Everyone gets

offended. Yeah. So I got those guys just rude here.
That's just the way it goes, youknow. But, yeah, hey, you know,

speak the lingo, and if you don't, then
shut up, shut up,

Aaron Brien (02:21):
shut up. Oh yeah,

it's we've been holed up in our house all day.
Why? Just recovering from

the week, last week, from last week? Yeah, just

we're, we're hard workers. Okay, okay, all right,
I know I don't understand whypeople don't understand why I
always got to explain myselfabout how hard I work. Let it
out. Safe Place, safe space.
Always asking me, How you doing,how you doing? I'm doing

(03:01):
horrible, and I work hard. Okay,just get on my back. I got a
bunch of kids, and I gotta feedthem, and everybody needs me for
something. And I'm tired ofasking, I'm tired of being asked
how I am

How are you then, really,
really, come on, we're gettingto the core of it. Come on.
Just,

we're just peeling off. Yeah, we are order shell.
Remember,

I was a counselor at one time. That was
just,

oh yeah, yeah.
That's gonna You might lose yourlicense.
Better not say that I

shouldn't even get my license. Oh,

you didn't. Oh, you're like a back alley
counselor. Hey, yeah, I'm here.
Yeah, come back here. I'm gonnafree you from the chains of
addiction.

You see brain time hide. Come on. Man,

roll up in a van with the couch. Hey, get in.
Yeah,

like some of those massage those, those
Asians that do massage therapy,I don't know if they even have
licenses.

You need license to be massage therapist.

I don't know Montana. I'm not sure.

Does it sound like you knew? Sound like you had
some advanced knowledge?

Just guessing, because you don't have to have
you don't have to have license.

Oh, there you go.
That was a, that was a semiconfident, oh, just guessing.
Yeah, that's the, that's theexit route for everything it is,
you know, I just guessing.

I don't know maybe.

Hey, Aaron, it's Casey. Nicholson.

Oh, it's Aaron.
What's up? Bruh, well, when

he said, Casey, I was like,

Casey. Casey.

Casey woke person from

Hey, Aaron, yo, keep going. Which gonna get

up? No, I'm gonna eat. I gotta eat, ah, crepes.
Hey, I want

you to do something for me. Yeah, I want
you to say billings,

Billings,

yeah. See,

see, Billings,

Billings.

You say, G,

No, you said, I absolutely like

he did it without a G,

like a full blown American, yeah? Billings, what
are you

guys talking about?
We're talking

about you.
We're we're asking Casey wherehe was at and he he didn't do a
full code switch when he saidwhere he was at because he's
kind of in, what do they callit? In academics there knows

(06:50):
what it's called. He's in thediaspora.

Diaspora. Diaspora sounds

like a fungus, right?

Anyways, sound right. I know

it doesn't sound right. So he so he did her code
switch to his, his normal,

his desk, bro, his ass assy, bro.

I before you get before you get carried away,
before let's give Aaron a chanceto what are you eating first,
what are

you eating?
What are you eating?

Brought me famous Davis.

Oh, decolonizing barbecue.

Indigenized.

Indigenizing.
Barbecue, yeah, I'm gonna, um,want to I want you to listen to
something. Okay, I do. I wantyou to listen to something here,
um, all of us, all of you. Iwant you to pay attention. I
want you to I want you to actright and listen. This is a song

(08:04):
shared to me. Children areshared to me through many
generation of tape recorders.

(08:27):
No, it's not that special, butcheck it out. Can you hear it?

Good dancing.

We just got into it. Oh, yeah.

(09:20):
I don't know if you can see thattape. Yeah, you see it? Yeah?
See the year. Yeah. MoreBellman. Stop talking.

Dance. Don't ever wait for me to start
dancing. Everybody dance now.

(10:46):
On the song now, Y'all got itnow? Shout.

You. Oh, yeah, raise it up forever, you.

In the forever,

there you go. Man, how you like

that? What? How do you like that? People don't make
songs like that. No more. No,they don't. Man,
that's two weeks in a row. SeanDean was bangers, man, I know
the one from this episode wasgood too.

Oh yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, Fort Belknap,
1977 that's from that's fromyour neck of the woods there.
Casey, yeah.

Bell, no, you

recognize who that was? I don't know who it is,

but could either be haze, or there's a
couple, there's a Bobby Bobtailor something. No iron, iron
child, no iron. What's that one?
They were, you know, by Bobbyiron maker, saying with,

I don't know, there's a lot of region,

one of the older songs, or older drum
groups, one of the first drumgroups that came out there. God,
that's what it sounds like.
Anyways,

I believe it. I believe it. Hey, my mind going
here now I'm going to dosomething, okay, and we're going
to, we're going to finish thisby the end of this recording,
but it's going to require youall to keep this going. Okay,
you ready? You ready? Just sayYeah. Somebody say yeah. You're

(13:01):
ready, okay, okay, you're goingto keep this going, not right
now, but you're going to thinkabout it. Okay, so a medicine
man, a shaman and a healer, theywalk into a bar. Would you get
that? Okay? I mean, it's almostfunny as it is, right? A shaman,

(13:23):
a medicine man and a healer walkinto a bar, and then, um, they
start arguing about who's thebest at what they do. Got it?
Okay, then you're going tofinish that, not right now, but
I got a bit. I got a differentquestion, and this one's, I

(13:46):
don't I don't know about it. Idon't know about it. And I'm
curious about what you think,what all three of you think
about this, because I'm on thefence about it. So there's this.
I don't know if it's astereotype. I don't know if it's
I don't know how real it is, butapparently Indians laugh at

(14:11):
everything, and we have this,apparently, a unique sense of
humor that is unique to Nativepeople. Furthermore,
furthermore, that unique humoris and and that, well what we're

(14:35):
known for, we use it as a way toheal and or hide our trauma. You
heard that before, right? Youheard that, yeah, Aaron heard
it, heard it, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, what do you think aboutthat? I I don't know. I did it.

(14:55):
You did it. I.

You did what. I've done it. I've done it. I've used
humor to hide my trauma. Yes,

okay, all right, okay,

yeah, yeah, I've never

not done it.

I've never not done it.

You've never done okay,
so, so this is the question thatI have then it so, because it
sounds like you all believethat, right? Yeah, okay, good
point, yeah. Well, Casey'sthinking about it. He's
thinking, Okay, should I believeit, or should I not? I mean, do
you believe it? You probablysaid it before, right? You
probably said it before topeople, we laugh because it's,

(15:41):
it's, it's the medicine we useto heal ourselves from the
wrongs of the past, yeah?

Well, not in those exact words,

not in those words like, wow, wow. Yeah, that was
boring.

Not gonna make I think, I think academic
background could shed some lighton some of this.

Well, I'm so, this is what I'm wondering then. So
then let's, let's

hear from I don't, well, I have nothing to say.
Well, I want

to rewind. I want to rewind the clock a bit. So
let's go back 1000 years. Didwere we still like that, or were
we really boring then? Becauseit wasn't the same amount of
trauma? Were we pretty boring1000 years ago? Not funny.

That's way too hypothetical, but I'm gonna say
that I imagine there was somelevel of sense of human in
Native people, okay, yeah,because

when you see one of your fellow warriors fall
off a horse or trying to hunt abuffalo, and they freaking, hey,
go head over heels in front of awoman that they're trying to
impress, yeah, you know, it'sgoing to be told in the camps.
You know, after, the deeds aredone, you know, they're gonna,
they're gonna talk and they'relike, Oh man, I know they're
gonna. You're gonna. Because Ithink, honestly, I think a lot

(17:08):
of their the the laughter andthe storytelling, all that stuff
is, I honestly do, really think,obviously, genetically, just in
like, and not even like, youknow, you could go
tribalistically, or whatever youwant to call it. Yeah, it's just
a natural way of I think,especially us Native people, no
matter what region you're in,that they're Yeah, they share
that humor within stories andyeah, and through, I guess,

(17:32):
trauma as well too. Okay, I justthink it's just inherently
within epigenetically, if youwant to go that route, whoa.
Here

we go. Here

we go. Epigenetic Okay, how did you, how do you
spell that? Yeah, look at thisup. I gotta look that one up,
yeah,

say it again.
Casey, yeah, play it

again.
Epigenetics, medically,

pretty much, pretty much meaning that things
are passed down, yeah, the DNA.

So one was free of charge, oftentimes,

yeah, associated times, associated with the
passing down of trauma, right? Iheard that one quite a bit, you
know. But, and that's the thing,

you know, I'm, I'm a big advocate of, you know,
all the trauma stuff. Okay,cool, there's trauma, yeah,
also, there's the other side ofthat too. Like, the healing is
also passed down as well, sure,the, you know, the funny stuff,
or the the crazy stuff that alsois passed down. But a lot of
people get so focused on thetrauma part of it, I'm like,
Yeah, well, there's the otherpart too. Like, there's our

(18:42):
genetics hold a lot of stuffwithin our, you know, within us,
there's other things that getpassed on beyond Yeah, you know.
So, yeah, yeah,

yeah, you're right.
I think Casey's Right. Like, weget stuck in that, huh? We do
see it a lot, and actually, infact, it seems like it's almost
encouraged to stay stuck inthat,

yeah, yeah,

stuck in the trauma. Well,

I guess in that part of it, you know, yeah,

that's, that's kind of why I was bringing it
up, is because oftentimes yousee Native humor, uh, distinctly
attached to trauma when I don'tknow, maybe it is, maybe it
isn't. I don't think it alwaysis. I think we just like to
laugh and have fun. You know? Idon't think it's because,
because of the genocide, orwhatever you want to call it,

(19:36):
the whatever this thing, thethings that happen, yeah, maybe
we're just this is people loveto laugh, right? Some people
would even say, like, thecollective laugh of a whole
entire race can reveal thesecret quantities or qualities

we. Laughing.
We are laughing now.

I'm going to go ahead and leave

the get to something here. Yeah, I mean,
you could say that, I don't knowyou could say you could even say
that maybe humor, even the humorand the laughter is connected to

(20:24):
even deeper constructs than justthe trauma, such as spirituality
or the understanding of theunknown. I don't know. What do
you think about that?

Yeah, I think again. Oh, yeah. Well, I my, my
brain, my mind, was goingeverywhere, every which way. But
honestly, I mean, I mean, if youwant to break it down and boil
it down, I mean, energy, it'sstraight. I mean, this is my
opinion, energy, yeah, and thatlaughter, that that, that energy
that comes with that laughter,yeah, um, is, is contagious. It.

(21:01):
You can feel it. You can feellaughter. But how that person is
sending the laughter versus theperson receiving it? Obviously,
that goes into a whole notherconstruct of, you know, trauma
or being able, have they beenteased, you know, all those
other kind of things. But Ithink, you know, keep it simple.
I think that the energy of thatlaughter is like, it's, it's

(21:24):
crazy, it's, it's, well, youknow, cliche, but it's powerful.
I really do. It's, it's, man, ifyou like you guys, like when you
guys laugh, like all three ofall, we all start laughing. We
could get into some gut bustingand nothing, like we just beat
off each other's laughs, right?
Yeah, yeah. And it's not likewe're people, oh, they're

(21:44):
they're traumatized, yeah. Andit must have needed that
healing. That's why they'relaughing so much. They needed
that healing. No, we're laughingbecause we're freaking some
goofy people. Like, we loveYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like,
why does it gotta becomplicated? Why does it gotta
be so, yeah, you know, I don'tknow. I don't Yeah,

okay, yeah, see, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so this is
the thing. So I think it's fairto say that we don't laugh just
because we're hurting. We laughbecause it's just a human it's a
human quality to to, I don'tknow, to just joke around and
have a good time, right? Well,apparently there's a well, I

(22:32):
don't know. I don't know if thisis true or not, but this is what
I want to ask all of you here.
Are there? Are there? Is, couldyou classify Like Put, put the
humor into different categoriesthat make sense, that natives
use. Could you classify it like,this kind of, this kind of

(22:52):
native humor is all this, likeone thing, like, like, teasing.
You know, teasing is the type ofhumor, right, where you're
directing it at somebody, andyou're making everybody laugh.
And then maybe there's anothertype of humor where you're sort
of telling a story, and in thatstory, there's funny parts. And
I'm wondering if there'scategories like that that you
see in your in your experience.

(23:15):
I

Yes, yes, yes.

Well, what are they? Man, what are they?

That's what I want to know. You name two
already. I would say you nametwo. Come on. Okay, yeah. I
named two, yeah. And thenthere's one where the
discomfort, that's another onediscomfort, the uneasy, the
uneasiness of things where youget the nervous laughter. Here's
the story really quick of acategory. One category, okay,
um, one of my relatives wasgetting their butt whipped by

(23:59):
their dad getting spent. I gotscared, like, hopefully this is
crazy, yeah, but I focused on mymy relatives face while they're
getting spanked, and then Istarted laughing.

Is joking about, like, diabetes? Is that kind of
the same kind of thing,survival, man.

Well, I think it's natural for any people to joke
about their surroundings, right?
Yeah, their environment,regardless of what's going on.
So that means, if it's aanything, we'll joke. But I do
think that the teasing part ofhumor, yeah, it's probably like
a huge part of, like native thatseems like getting it, it seems
like laughter at the expense ofsomebody else. Seems to be a big

(24:48):
part of even the way we likeself govern, you know, yeah,

I think you're right. I think you're right.
Some. Some people even thinkthat, like, you could even use,
you could even use native humoras, sort of like a criteria to
know, like, who, where peopleare from, or even if they're

(25:16):
from, or sort of what theirbackground is right. Like,
because if you, if youmercifully tease somebody and
they can't take it, I mean, Imean, you could sort of tell,
like, what their upbringing was,you know, in a particular way,
and I don't know if that's trueor not. I mean, what do you
think about that? You thinkthat's true? Yeah,

good degree. I think, I think due to a degree.
Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don'twant to assume that I would say
not everybody that I grew upwith that's the same type of
humor I do, yeah, but I wouldsay every single person I grew
up with Yeah, knows how totease. Oh yeah. They don't all

(25:58):
have like, they don't all havelike, maybe, let's just stay for
the sake of conversation,there's four types of humor.
That's just the made up number,okay,

for the four directions,

for the four directions, for the

four four humors, the sacred four humors, the

four sacred humors, yeah, yeah. We'll come
up with more. So then we'll makeit seven.

Seven, yes,

yeah. So I would say most native people in our
like area, yeah, region, yeah.
They don't have all four, butevery one of them is going to
have some level of the teasing.
Yeah, I don't think I've evermet a native person that doesn't
know how to tease a little bit.
I've met a lot of native peoplethat don't know how to get

(26:46):
teased, though. Oh yeah,

they get hurt.
They try to fight you. Justleave.

So I think maybe we're native. A
lot of us are, like, experttrollers, you know, is that's
really what it is. Like, you'lltroll somebody Yeah, like you
smell blood and yeah, just likeyou go in, you know, yeah,

yeah and yeah and yeah. Maybe

that's wrong.
Basically shaking and said atme, like, but

no, that's, we're about healing.
No, there's even okay. So therewas, I was reading this brief
article about Native humor, justto see what was out there in in
the literature, you know,academic literature, and one

(27:45):
researcher suggested that nativehumor is also used as a means of
testing for anyone whoseidentity as a native person is
questionable or unknown. Did youever do that? Somebody? No, no.
I mean, it seems wrong, right?
Like, I'm gonna find out

test to see if I wanted to hang out with
somebody. Yeah, somebody wascool, regardless if they're a
native or not. Like, yeah, kindof like, test your boundaries,
and you're like, wow, thisperson seems pretty serious,
like a a serious person, butit's situational, yeah? Casey,
know this? Like, Oh, good. Like,say you go to Apollo and you're

(28:26):
going to sing all weekend with adrum group. In all honesty, you
don't want to sit at a drum withUltra serious people. No. Like,
because you're, you're stuckthere right for 678, hours.
Oh, yeah, so, butthat those type of people might
be cool in a differentsituation, but for me, power
policy in the recreation. So Iwant to enjoy myself. I want to

(28:49):
laugh, I want to tease. I wantto hear good stories. So yeah, I
don't want to see really rigidyeah and

yeah, I think there's one part of it too.
Like, um, like, I thinksometimes some natives will push
that not, not to testnecessarily, but to see how
genuine that person is at theirconference. Like, kind of what
Aaron was saying, like, you'regoing to surround yourself with
some, you know, singing bros,yeah. You want to kind of figure

(29:21):
out, like, hey, like, howgenuine are these guys? Like,
how real, you know, howauthentic? Yeah, I think
authentic people. I think, in myopinion, some authentic people
are really able to let loose andlaugh and tease and joke, enjoy,
and that's the biggest thing, isenjoy, enjoy the moment that
life, or whatever it is, and,yeah, you know. And I think

(29:43):
that's part, and part of thattesting thing is like, how
genuine are you, you know, areyou laugh at yourself? Are you
able to laugh with us, you know,or whatever? So that, yeah,
yeah, would be another part. Iagree.

I. Could laugh at a funeral, if he can.

It's true. It's true. It is true.

Yeah, so I think that's somewhat, somewhat of a
of a miss, misapplication ofnative humor that I find in the
literature now. And there wasthis other thing, oh, wait, let
me get let me get to the second.
Did you guys think about theremember the medicine man, the

(30:33):
shaman and the healer? They walkinto the bar and they start,
completely forgot about it.
Okay, medicine man, Shaman inthe healer, walk into a bar to
get an argument, right? Soeventually they say, Okay, this
is it. We're going to we justhave to prove who's the best,
who's the best at what we do. Sowhat we're going to do this?

(30:57):
They all agree we're going to dowe're going to go into the
woods. We're all going to gointo the woods in different
directions, and we're, we'll seewho can get a mountain lion for
a helper. So they all go off gofind a mountain lion for a
helper. Now you're going tofinish this, but not right now,
because I'm going to read you,I'm going to read you some
jokes, and I want, I want to getyou rating on these jokes. Okay,

(31:20):
this is, this is this isstraight from the academic
literature, okay? And I'm gonna,and now I don't know. Man, I
don't know. I don't know. Okay,here we go. Are you ready? You
know, are you ready? So this isthis. These are apparently one
liners that are employed byNative people called razzing.

(31:46):
Yeah, part of the, part of theapparently, apparently, part of
the nature of teasing andrazzing is to keep yourself
humble among the group. I don'tknow about that? Okay,
here we go.

I'm more humble.

Okay, so a native artist was asked one day why
Indians. Was asked one day onwhy Indians were the first ones
on the continent, and hereplied, we had reservations.

(32:34):
It gets worse. It gets worse.
Okay, gone. I kind of almostpassed out.
Okay, uh, here's another one.
Are you a full blooded Indian?
The reply, no, I'm a pint low. Ijust came from the blood bank.

(32:59):
Oh, stupid.
Okay,

wow.

Okay, one more.
One more. Okay, here wego. You can probably and you
could probably guess the answer,are you ready? Do Indians have
psychic powers? Do you know theanswer? Do you know Aaron

(33:35):
the reply? I knew you're goingto ask me that I just knew it.

Oh, oh, what are you doing? Dude,

jokes, let them bees.

Yeah, let him bomb.
Let the bomb happen. Naturally.

Don't refuse.
I'm just

generally, to, I'm just trying to give you a taste
of what's written about Nativehumor, the

things that are the written by native humor, and
are these like this is ascholarly written, yeah, peer
reviewed, all that jazz, yeah,yeah, oh yeah, yeah. This should
be eye

opening to you.
This should be upsetting to you.
Okay, how do you insult aIndian? This is bad. This is a
bad one. Call him or her aColumbus lover.

No,

no, no, no. You want to hear more?

I kind of do. Okay.
Got me intrigued by these.

Okay, here we go.
This is peer reviewed research.
Man, this is what's gettingpumped out, and people are
reading and quoting and citingabout us. Okay, what's the
difference between praying inchurch and praying at a casino?
Yeah. What at a casino? Youreally mean it? Oh, yeah.

So weird.

It is weird. Okay, so here's the problem, here's
the problem. We I just walkedyou through some serious
misconceptions about Nativehumor in the literature that
young, impressionable nativescholars are reading, that non
native people are reading, andthat doesn't quite hit the mark.

(35:58):
Man, it doesn't quite hit themark, and I want to try to help
it hit the mark. So I'm curious.
Then, I don't know. I don't knowhow I could go about and write
an academic article and do abetter job. I don't know if I
could do that, so I didn't, Idon't know, but what I'm curious

(36:20):
what, what I

was gonna say humor is kind of like time stamps too,
like it is what was neat to likeour dad and our our
grandparents. My is different tous. I mean, obviously there's
overlap, but I imagine, ifyou're going to do an academic

(36:44):
study on jokes, that's probablywhere you'll run into that, but
you're doing a study on humor,yeah, that there's way more
overlap in that, I would think,I don't know,

yeah, it seems hard to

commit. You gotta jump in, buddy. Yeah,

it seems hard to commit that. Like, what? Like
the real, organic nature ofhumor in written words. So
Alicia was reading a bookrecently. What was it called?
Remember that book? Well, Ican't remember what it was
called, but it started out kindof okay, like it was about
Native humor, but then it wentoff the rails quickly, and it

(37:26):
started to just get, like,carried away, man, kind of like
what I was reading, the jokeswere just funny. It

just, I just realized, you're doing this
because Casey's a comedian.

Is he a comedian?
He hasn't made us laugh yet.

No, I just realized this. You

just realized it?
Just now? Yeah, so Casey, justnow, because in my mind,

I still, I've known Casey a while, so I know him, I
still see him as like acounselor Well, psychologist,
right? Kind of, what are you?
What were dudsley, yeah, good.
Counselor, yeah. Counselor, wewere talking, I kind of see him
as the counselor and

a grass dancer, indigenous mental health
team, yeah?

I mean, I know him.
I know obviously, I know him asa comedian, but like mine, yeah,
you know how you first questionstill, kind of, I just realized
that's cliche.

Well, I mean, all of us, well, all of us held
jokes. Wait, wait, wait, wait,wait,

wait, make me laugh. Casey.

Step back, step back. No. I mean, all of us here
can agree that we don't thinkCasey's that funny.

Clear that out there.

Yeah, clear it all out because Casey can't be
funny, just in the in how we'redoing it right now. He can be.
He just can't be. We have tostart talking about, like, like,
what? What is that? What wasthat? One thing that we did that
time places that are not good tosmudge. Remember that, oh my

(39:04):
god, places that you ought notto smudge. And then, then we all
kind of laugh around and saysomething dead chime in, but,
but it's if you try to set itup, it just don't work. Like,
okay, Casey, in this nextsegment, we're going to talk
about smudging and places whereit's inappropriate go.

I think, I think, I think, Okay, if you because
Casey's been doing stand up fora while now, yeah, he's Pro. I
think if you gave him a topic,he could find something funny
about it. Okay, I Okay. I alsothink we can't do what he does.
No, we can't No. In order to be,I think in order to be a decent,

(39:51):
just a decent, stand up, yeah,you have to bomb a lot. Oh,
yeah. And I don't know if Icould do that. That's self.
Esteem has to be, I don't, Idon't think, I think a lot of
qkc, and they're like, I got ajoke for you

that's trying to do that.

Well, I think that's the thing is, is the
vulnerability of of it. You knowwhat? I mean? Like, it's just
like being able to formulate,formulate some words based off
of some people are just like,chill. They do one liners and
all that. Some are acting outtheir stories or their jokes.

(40:36):
Yeah. But to the vulnerabilityof it. I think it just, it's
something that is scary for somepeople, but, but the thing I
don't get is there's somefreaking hilarious people. All,
all, all three of y'all arehilarious. And I like, man, you
should tell that stage, you knowwhat I mean. And it's just like,

(40:59):
Oh no, you know. Like, but it'sfunny. Like, that would totally
get a laugh. But when people goon stage, they reformat it
because of theiruncomfortableness, the crowd
looking at them, the judging,yeah, um, that kind of stuff. I
think just the vulnerabilityand, yeah, self esteem. Sure,
you guys all got pretty good,high self esteem. So I wouldn't
really equate it to that. Ithink the vulnerability of it is

(41:21):
just, you're up there byyourself. You don't have, like,
I say all the time. You don'thave that band, you don't have a
drum, you don't have a guitar tobail you out. Like, when you
bomb, you bomb, it's all in,

yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cuz it's a pretty honest
engagement. You say somethingfunny and people laugh. If
people don't laugh, it's notfunny to them.

And you're telling, and,
yeah, you're telling jokes infront of people you don't even
know. They don't even seen youbefore, don't even know your
style. Yeah, your your setup,your punchline, they don't know
nothing about you. Like, andthat's, that's the crazy thing.
And yeah, you go up there andtell the one liner jokes, and,
you know, like, you know, the,yeah, the casino jokes and all
that. But you could tell thosejokes honestly, but you could

(42:09):
tell us one line of jokes. But Ithink it really comes down to,
like, the delivery of it, youknow, not. I mean, Sean Dean was
kind of monotone just saying it.
But, I mean, I'm sure if you setit up in a different way, it,
yeah, probably fun new year.
Maybe, I

don't know. I don't know if those, there's a couple
that aren't going to be funny.
Yeah, I think they're funny inthe sense that making fun of the
joke, yeah, it can be funny.

The thing that was funny about it was him
laughing at the joke,

knowing, knowing it was a bad joke, I think was,
yeah, funny, but I think thedifference between a stand up
and native humor, because a lotof native people are funny, but
they're not stand ups, and theycouldn't be. The difference is
because a lot of our humor ispredicated on the audience
knowing our environment evenreferences to people like you,

(43:00):
you're talking about somebodythat everybody knows, or, like,
why that person said every reshas those people that everybody
knows and that that's like, youdon't have to, like, set all
that up.

Yeah, that's kind of like the Oh, go ahead, keep
going.

No, that would be tough. Yeah, that'd be hard to
do. So that's kind of like, justbecause you're funny, you can be
a stand up.

Yeah? That's like the genesis of the anti, the
native anti. I think that'swhere that kind of come from,
this sort of archetype of whatI'm like. So over

that stuff, that's, I've always thought that was
weird. Yes, it is

the auntie stuff, auntie and uncle, yeah,

so weird, yeah. I mean,

in a certain way, it's funny, but again, it's
situational, right? Like, likeeverything, yeah. So

Casey, I have a question for you, how long do
you think? And because you'regoing on almost 20 years now,
right? 15 years, 16 years?

Yeah, I see 2000 so comedy, 2010 so, yeah,
almost 15 years. Full time.

Yeah, yeah. So full time, divide and solve for x, no
How did it take? You really feltlike you started finding your
own thing? Because I think everycomedian probably goes through
stages, right? Like, yeah, youhit the low hanging fruit stuff

(44:32):
at the beginning. Yeah, go onfast native jokes.

2000 I would say 2017 is when I think I
started, because I started doingcomedy, not only in front of
natives. I started doing comedyactually in front of, you know,
a diverse crowd. And when I wasmaking them laugh, and when I
was, you know, getting intodifferent comedy competitions,
that's when I felt like I wascatching a groove, like, Okay,

(44:58):
this is mine. This is, this is.
Is no one else I feel had a samecomedy routine that I did.

So it took. It took roughly seven years. Yeah, oh
yeah. And from the stuff I'veseen with comedians, I'm not a
comedian, but, oh, sorry, seven,five, it seems about like 567,
years before people startfiguring it out. Oh,

yeah. Some people say it's about five
years. Um, mine was, I would saymine was little. And I'm not
saying that it was prolonged,because I wasn't doing comedy
all the time since 2010 like I'dhave one or two, three gigs from
1112, 13, and then when I hitfull time 2014 that's when my
gig started. Really going alittle bit higher, because I was

(45:44):
hustling, I was working for him,I was going up with mikes, doing
all those other things. Butthose first two or three years,
I was probably getting, I don'tknow, like, 10 minutes, about
four or five times a year, youknow, and so, and most of it was
just silence. And then there'dbe the like, a couple banger
jokes that would like, you know,like, have people rolling. I'm

(46:05):
like, Okay, there's somethingthere, you know, but, but it
wasn't like a comedy. It wasn'tlike a comedy place in LA,
Chicago, Seattle, you know,where they get wrapped four or
five times a night, every othernight, or every night, you know?
But, yeah, so I didn't catch myso

how many minutes you have now? Do you have an
hour? Yeah, I probably

go about hour and 15

So, and you're pretty you you feel like that
out you're pretty comfortablewith that hour. Oh,

yeah, yeah. Oh, nice. Either, either I'm either
I'm gonna be telling jokes fromthe ones that are written down,
or I might be just playing, youknow, play, playing with the
crowd a bit, then go and thentransitioning into a joke, you
know, like, Oh, that reminds meof this joke. Blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, you know, yeah,

what?
My daughter came in to theliving room yesterday and said,
she said, Dad, I'm going to be astand up comedian. And then I
said, she said, you want to hearmy routine? She said, I have one
joke.
Yeah, she's 12, right? It'salready funny. She goes,

(47:20):
I'm half white. And then sheleans in and goes, ask me what
the other half is.
What's the other half? And shegoes, also white.
It's funny, because she's notwhite at all. I

(47:47):
That's her first joke in herstand up comedy career.

Nice,

and, yeah, you would totally and she would just
end it with what you just said,Yeah, because I'm not white at
all, you know? I mean, boom,

that's funny.
Yeah, I

don't know why it was funny. Part of the joke too
is like, she tells you what tosay. She Oh, yeah. Ask me what
the other half is, yeah, that'sfunny.

That's a good routine. She could do a whole
set on that

she's onto something. Yeah,

pretty good. So, oh, good. Oh yeah. No, no, you
go,

no, no no,

your time. Casey,

no. But I think, I think when, when we
were, I was going to saysomething earlier about comedy
and how the it's, it's, I thinkreally comes down to the
psychological part of it. Like,you can, you can make anybody
laugh with, like, let's saywithin our own circle, our
cousins, our our, you know,uncles, or whatever. You make

(48:59):
them laugh because we alreadyhave a psychological connection.
But when you go in front of acrowd that you don't know, the
first thing you gotta do is yougotta make that psychological
connection. Like, what, what'sgoing to make me buy into you?
That's so funny, so obviously,that misdirection, like, you
know, the awkwardness that's,that's the psychological like,
I'm okay, now I'm intrigued.
Like, you know, yeah, she's,she's pretty awkward. Okay, Ask
me, ask me what else I am, orwhatever that that now, now you

(49:22):
got me bought inpsychologically. You're making
my mind turn. You're not givingme the answer. You're actually
making me think. So the oneliners like Sean Dean was saying
earlier. It's not making youthink. It just kind of like, oh,
okay, whatever, you know. But ifhe added like, little twists and
turns or misdirection orsomething that we totally
wouldn't even expect then, yeah,yeah. That makes it fun, yeah.

(49:42):
But I think that's one of thebiggest things with comedy, is
the psychological connection.
Like you, you have to learnyou're literally a mind you're,
you're, you're a magician yourmind, you're, you're a mind game
player, kind of like you're yougotta play the mind games with
the crowd. It's. Crazy. It'sYeah, it's weird. Yeah,

you're a mind game here guy. Yeah, I am

mind gamer. Guys, Indian guys are good at playing
mind games. They're really goodat it. You know, that's another
episode. I like they'll asktheir old lady, why you so mad?
But really, they're the onethat's

mad. Why are you so mad? Man, I use I use that all
the time.
That's mine. Gamer, are

you mad? Why

are you so mad at me? You're

the one really mad.
Well, nobody wants to lose anargument. So I don't know why. I
don't know why this is, this isnow become acceptable. I'm going
to win.
You're right, you're right,

you're right.
Okay,

that's another one. You're right. You're so
perfect, yeah,

ultra passive aggressive.
We do it. We can't help iteither. We're so dumb every
time,every time, every time, we just
can't help it. Okay, this iswhat I want. Now you care.

Oh, oh, so now you care.

So dumb, so dumb, so dumb.
I'm so dumb. What?

What? Got a question for

Casey? Oh, let's shoot man. Do it. It

was a simple question, so in your early

question, but it just tell me, Oh,

I said it's a simple question. Oh,

okay, okay, calm down. Remember, men have high
self esteem. Casey said it. Highself esteems here. Okay, just
roll with him. Man, you don'thave to prove Are you
mad? You don't have to prove it.
Don't think. Why you mad? Youdon't have to
prove to me that you think yourquestion's stupid. Yes.

Okay, go. You were a counselor before. What did you
feel like? It was a fairly easytransition to go from a
counselor to a comedian.

You're on mute, bro,

yes, actually it was No, you're good.

Every time, every time I'm gonna get a fake news
that

he's doing a video.
What

do you call me?
Don't call me that. Call mefake. Remember, we have high
self

esteem. That's a fake. Mute. Um,

okay, question

wise, yeah, it was, I think it was easy because
of, again, because of thepsychological part of it,
because again, you're trying tomake connection with that person
across from you while you'recounseling. You're trying to get
to know them, where they comefrom, break down the barriers,
the walls, to allow them to bethemselves. And so I guess with
the crowd, you'd want to breakdown those walls, you know,

(53:24):
psychologically, say, hey, Iwant you to be yourself, and I
want you to laugh, because I'mfunny. I don't know, something
like that. That's what I wouldsay, yeah. So it was a
relatively easy, I don't know ifit was, you know what? Honestly,
yeah, it was, I don't know. Ithink it was, but I think, I
think I've always, I've alwayswanted to be it. So I was
already prepping myself throughwatching tons of, obviously

(53:49):
stand up shows and obviouslygathering some material from
different scenarios in myprofession, you know, so with no
names, of course, yeah. I mean,there's just some funny, some
funny situations and scenariosthat you can, you know, roll off
of, like, dang. I never thoughtabout it that way, you know. And

(54:11):
you kind of like, Oh, okay. Butthen put it in that, but then
the the thought tank, andhopefully that you can use that
someday.

So do you think, though, just what you said, Do
you think that like nativeespecially, seems like
practitioners of native people,we like bank and we have
ammunition when you go, when yougo around, like traditional
people like ammunition, and theycan't wait to, like, Tell

(54:40):
Somebody like, hey, guess what?
This guy did, you know? What didthey say? You know what I mean,
like, and they'll kind of knockyou out and like and everyone
laughs at your expense for alittle bit, then you might do
that. It seems like a naturalprocess for a lot of native
people to bank, I guess what youwould call jokes. But really
this, it's like ammunition. You.
Against people. So did you feellike that was pretty natural for

(55:03):
you anyway, to like because theway I imagine it, like any skill
you research your premise, andthat's the way I think people
think of it. But I feel likenative comedians, because of
their upbringing, there are,they've learned to bank ambition
like that, funny stories, andeven like the teasing part of

(55:24):
it, like you're banking stuff,something tells me Jerry
Seinfeld never teased people,you know what? I mean, like, not
in the same sense that like wedid, we did like, so he's like,
probably at the profession ofstand up, probably the most,
like, well thought out, like hethinks out, you know, those high
level guys. But did you feellike when you started banking,

(55:50):
obviously, when you startedbanking information that started
way before the stand up comedy,

yep. Um, and I think a lot of the banking part
was actually being, I can relateto a lot of the stuff that it
was banking, so as whether itbe, you know, the funny stories
around camp or around a drumgroup or in the profession I was
in, like, I think a lot of that,honestly, was being able to
relate to those things andsaying, How Can I use that

(56:20):
information that I'm banking andtwisted or formatted, or make it
seem like I'm going down thisroute, and do a little twist to
to make it funny, because Ithink that the the median art
form had to been learned. Likethat had to and like the punch
line, you know, the setup, youknow, the set up, the punch
line, all that stuff that had tobe learned. I already had the

(56:42):
information. I already had thethe the relating part of my the
people that I was around with.
So I can, like, I can makepeople laugh if I could just
relate to them. But now, how doI set it up to not draw out this
long story and lose them, butenough to where I'm like, Okay,
if I say this and I twist itlike this, and I'm going to say
something I never expected, butstill were. They're able to

(57:02):
relate to it, you know. So,like, one of my first jokes was
the spanking joke, you know. Andhow I related to the crowd was
right away, you know. And we wetalked about at the beginning of
this, we talked about the traumaand all that stuff. But I was
like, how many all got spanked?
And again, this joke came out offreaking left field. I have
none. I didn't have anythingwritten down. My first time ever

(57:23):
going up on stage, didn't havenothing. And I was like, you
know, fumbling, and then allsudden, I said, Man, I got
spanked. I got spanked hard.
When I was a kid. How many guysused to get spanked? And people
like, oh, you know, like theyclapped or whatever, and raise
their hand. And then, as I'mtelling the story, the jokes
already being written before itgets to my mouth, right? Mm, so

(57:45):
there it is. Here it comes.
Okay? I used to get, I used toget whipped by my mom's thong.
That's what my mom would callthe tool, the thong, right? And
then my mind's already like, oh,there's what. She was a slipper.
Yeah, it was a slipper, right?
And so she's like, so I waslike, I looked at this one
woman, she reacted. I'm like,Yes, I got her. And again, I'm

(58:07):
already the joke's alreadyformulating there. And again,
I'm just telling the joke offtop of my head. Never wrote
down. I'm just telling it offtop my head. And I seen her
react, and I said, Oh, no, notthat kind of thong. It's not
that where, you know, you pullit out of your ash crack and
pull it back like you're gonnatry, you know, that's why the
joke, naturally, was justformulating for me, because now

(58:29):
I got them relating to me. Ihave a psychological connection
with them. I'm talking about mytrauma. So I could be really, I
can be really connected. I guessI could be really, oh, I could
be invested in this joke, youknow, yeah, so I'm playing it
out my and again. And a lot ofpeople don't understand that the
the the verbiage and the wordsand the fluctuation of the voice

(58:51):
and like, it's gotta be allgoing rhythmically, connected
together, so that, yeah, when Icome out very end. They're
laughing. They're I got themrolling because if I stutter, or
if I go um or a or, you know, orwhatever kind of repetitive
thing, I'm going to lose them,you know what I mean. So it has

(59:12):
to be this fluid story where I'mstill connecting with them. I'm
psychologically, got them boughtin. Yeah, I shorten the
experience to where I neverthought about it that way, you
know, that kind of thing, yeah.
And so that joke kind of likejust kind of almost unfolded,

(59:33):
how my start, how my style kindof came to be. And it was from
that, was from, honestly, justbeing able to relate to the
crowd, relate to the people thatI was telling jokes to, yeah,
again, and honestly, that mysecond time ever doing comedy
was a bomb like a bombed likehard. I wrote all my jokes down

(59:56):
verbatim, because that's writeyour jokes down. No. Of them,
you know, word for word. Get itdown. Five minutes packed all
right, here we go on stage.
First joke, boom. Nothing.
Second, nothing. Third joke,nothing. You know. Fourth joke,
fifth joke, you know, I'm justlike, okay, that's my time. And
I walked off, and I don't, I'mpretty sure I didn't get, I got
the sympathy claps. I didn'tget, no, I pretty sure I got

(01:00:23):
maybe a couple uncomfortablegiggles, but they weren't real
loud. But I remember. But Iremember walking away from that
and saying, I don't ever want tofeel that again. I remember that
I'm like, I don't remember. So Ijust went back to my first time,
and then I just started to kindof working on that. So my, my,

(01:00:44):
my, my failure in that comedystance was actually my, my rise.
I guess you'd call it, because Ididn't ever want to feel that
again. It was a horrible I mean,my aunties weren't laughing.
People were kind of like it wasreally bad. And then, because I
was being too too structured,you know? It wasn't flowy. It

(01:01:06):
was just yeah, you know, andit should have been, I that.

Aaron Brien (01:01:28):
You know, first time I seen you do comedy was in
Missoula, like, long time ago.
Is that a

Salisha Old Bull (01:01:33):
sign red corn?
I seen you once do that, man, I

don't know. It was like long time ago. It had to
have been 20 while you

Kasey Nicholson (01:01:42):
Yeah, it was 2010 or 11, yeah, yeah, it was
early,

Shandin Pete (01:01:49):
long ago, long ago, long ago. It's funny.

Though I laughed, I laughed. We went because of you,
like, I went because of you,because I think you told you
were like, Hey, I'm going to dothis deal. So, yeah,

yeah, thank you for that.
You know, Ernie,

you know, instructing is sort of, it's the
same. It seems very similar. Theway you describe it, you know,
providing instruction forstudents is, like, I employ a
lot of humor, but I don't, Inever think of the things that
I'm going to say. It's alwaysjust on the fly, you know, like
you, like you're always judgingyour audience. That's how I feel
when I'm instructing is I'malways judging the students, see

(01:02:32):
where they're at, and trying torelate what I'm teaching them
to, sort of, how I, how I howreceptive they are to like, sort
of, sort of my life. So I bringlittle pieces of my life in that
that seem to be funny, and youknow, that that really helps,
that I think that's, that's thething you described, is very

(01:02:53):
familiar. And I think that worksnot only in humor, but in
instruction, in in anything thatanyone does in front of a crowd.
You know, you gotta know thecrowd. It's like, I kind of
reminds me of, like bouncing abasketball. You know, when you
once you get it dribbling, youkind of know the thing that's
going to keep it moving. Youknow, there's like, these, like
these little cues that you canjust say, you got them, you

(01:03:15):
already got them laughing, andit just takes us very little to
prod them along, to get them togo more. And if those things
were said out of context, theywould not be funny, but because
you already got the ballbouncing, they just keep going.

Yeah, it does seem like comedy relies heavily on
rhythm and like momentum. Likeyou build momentum with you. The
difference, though, betweeninstruction and stand up, I
think, is there's no expectationto be funny and instruction,
yeah,

yeah, you shouldn't be but you can fall

back. There's always this fall back thing.
It's extra. It is,

I think, I think the the thing about the
expectation to be funny is why alot of people don't dive into
comedy or stand up, and somepeople just don't want it. But,
I mean, there's some people thatare really funny that could be,
for example, there's thesecertain there's a comedy
workshop I did once where, youknow, laughter is healing, kind
of workshop thing where I said,Alright, hey guys, you know,

(01:04:13):
this is my intro, this is mymotivation. But I said, Hey, I
was just, you know, I told afunny story. And I said, Does
anybody else got, like, a funnystory that they want to share
too, like, man. The thing thathappened to me this morning was
I couldn't believe it. It wasfunny. We had people rolling.
Has anybody else can, you know,have a funny story like that?
Sure, like, two or three peoplewent up, had us rolling, just
like, ah. After that was over, Iwas like, you know, I kind of

(01:04:37):
went on a little bit more aboutmy comedy career. And then I was
like, man, so you know, I'mgoing to give it people
opportunity, you know, to standup and tell a few jokes. You
know, one liners. You know,knock, knock jokes. Anybody and
nobody stood up. Nobody's like,No way I relate it back to those
three people that had usrolling. And I said, believe it
or not, those three people thatwere telling us the story. You.

(01:05:00):
You, you guys were literallydoing comedy. Like, that's what
it is. Like, you were, you'retaking us through a scenario.
You hit us with a setup, a punchline, and we laughed, and you
didn't even know what it was,and I explained to him what what
it was, you know, and then,like, well, never thought about
that, like, but as soon as weyou asked us the anxiety or or

(01:05:20):
the vulnerability of getting upand actually telling jokes. And
these people actually stood up.
They stood up from their theirdesk or their their chairs,
yeah, and told these funnystories and had us rolling,
yeah? But I mean, again, I mean,I think it really comes down to
that, that connection, notrealizing like that, expect,
expect, expecting to be funny?

(01:05:41):
Yeah,

I had this thing happen to me, like so
instruction, like Aaron said,and do not expect it to be
funny. It does help. But I hadthis thing. I had this thing
where I thought I taught thesame class two different
sections. One was just acrossthe board, students, you know,

(01:06:03):
anybody across across campus.
Then I taught a very specialsection for Native students. And
in that class, you know, Icould, I could rely on so much
relatable things, you know, andwhen you're talking about that
just now, it got to me. It gotme thinking about something that
I could say in one class, but Icouldn't say in the other one,

(01:06:24):
and in the in the native class,I could talk about nits. I could
talk about nits in lice, in, youknow, the shampoo, it's the
shampoo called the mix? I don'tknow if that go off the same in

(01:06:47):
front of the other class. So Iwas thinking like, what is there
other Is there things that younotice in your in your line of
work? Like, if the crowd ismostly and I don't know if you
get crowds that are primarilynon native or not, and is there
things that you know that it'snot going to connect to them,
like you can't talk about nits,or you can't talk about your

(01:07:09):
diet, your uncle's diabetes, toethat got cut off, that like
people would be shocked, like,Oh my God, why is he talking
about that? But the the nativecrowd, it'd be real funny. Is
there something that you noticethere that, like there's a line
that you have to draw that'sdifferent from the primarily
native to the non native crowd.
I don't know if you had thosesituations, but let me know. No,

um, I don't, I know. Um, I've, I think I'd see
it as a challenge to bring upour native humor with non
natives, to see if our humor canbe funny to them, and they are.
It is. I mean, I've won comedycompetitions based off of our
humor. You know what I mean infront of you get it all, and the

(01:07:50):
reason they get it is becausehow you set it up, you know,
like, yeah, okay, knits rightaway. All the natives allow, but
you gonna, you have to say, youhave to set up and kind of

say it, I know, right?

You have to, kind of like, set it up and
twist it as a you know? You justhave to set it up a different
way. But you don't have to drawthe line, you know what? I mean,
yeah, yeah.

So this one time, what? Oh, good. Just one time I
didn't have a comb for school,so, so I dug around, and I felt
but I found a knit comb.
It was like, Oh, I got a knitComb. Comb, comb my hair with

(01:08:36):
the knit comb. And I noticedthat, oh, wow, this knit comb
really makes my hair smooth, youknow, like it, like aligns all
the hair. I

really like that Nick's all my danger. Found
good exfoliator, comb to school,and just told on yourself

you want to use it. I use

it one

time I was on another reservation. I won't say
where we're at a power and thesetwo kids, these, I see these two
groups of kids running towardseach other, like, excited,
right? Yeah. And they get closeto each other, and they meet up,
and they're like, little razors,you know? And the one kid says

(01:09:27):
to the others, gets us. My momsaid, I can go play with you
guys, but you can't give mebugs. And then the kid says,
Okay. And then they takeoff. The whole group takes off.

Okay, okay, deal,

poor kids. I was

like, Oh man,

okay. I want to, I want to tell you.

I want to know Casey,
what. But not, I'm not talkingabout non native people, but
What? What? What? Give us anexample of what premise or joke
works around here, like theplains and Rockies, but won't
work like, say, with like tribesin California or something like,
what's you ever run into thatwhere, like, something's

(01:10:19):
working, and then you go outsideof that region, then it's, man,
this doesn't seem to like fit,but I want to

know about native from native to natives.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but just Oh, because there's
this assumption that we're allthe same, but there were no
yeah,

oh, that's, it's like,

I know, well, maybe it's a help, or has it not
happened? Well, there's, well,there's one, like, like, you
know, fry bread is a term, youknow, in the States, and then
Bannock is the term in Canada.
So, but, I mean, people stillget it when you say fry bread or
Bannock, like, that's, is thatkind of what you're talking
about? Aaron, I

mean, I guess, but, yeah, but not that dumb. That's
why I said premise like,

well, we don't know. I don't think. I mean,

like the jokes that I've, I've done and form
like, I guess, formed or wroteare pretty if I feel like I'm
losing them, I'll bring insomething to hook them back in.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Solet's say I'm just trying to
think of one that kind of we'reout of push to kind of get them
in, bought in. Yeah. We'llprobably be one of the first

(01:11:39):
jokes, I guess I would do was,was, was the sometimes I would
war cry, and so, like we werecrying in Montana. And people
get that, you know, that kind ofthing, yeah. Oh, so one would be
in the Seattle area. So they,they don't work, right? They,
they have really deep voices,like the way they sing right,

(01:12:00):
like, oh, and the way we sing isreally, you know, high or roller
voice. And so it's totallydifferent. So I was telling a
joke, but again, this joke, youknow, on the fly as I'm telling
it, I felt like I was losingthem. I went right to like, you
know, white women, like, thiskind but, you know, I mean

(01:12:22):
something like that. You know,white women like, like a
screaming in Montana. I don'tknow how you women like here,
you know, you like your man inbed, going, Oh,

that's funny. Yeah.

So I thought I was losing them, and then I kind
of diverted into, like, more ofa the women kind of like, the
women like it here. How does thewomen like it here? You know
that? I So, but I saved myselfby doing that because I was
losing off my work cries, likethey weren't really into the
work cries or the singing, likesinging high Yeah, but yeah, so
that'd be Yeah.

That answers my question. That's good example,
yeah.

But again, like some comedians will they, they
have their jokes written, andthey'll, they'll stay on, on
their they'll stay on that, thatline. They'll be like, Okay,
this all I'm gonna say. This ishow I'm gonna do it now. Okay,
next show. And some of themwill, like, lose a crowd, but
they'll just keep going throughtheir jokes,

like a record, yeah,

yeah. They'll just keep going. And then they
they have this little plateau,and they don't go up or down,
they're just kind of, it'sthere. And so for me, I feel
like I've learned through theyears, like, okay, if I'm losing
a crowd, how can I get thembought back in? You know? Yeah,
yeah. And, I mean, fortunatelyenough, I think I've, you know,
been able to do that. Yeah, youknow, some, some, honestly, some

(01:13:47):
banquet shows are tough becausethey're not there to laugh.
They're there for the free food.
They're there for the doorprize.
Yeah? So they could be tough.

Some of us are there to scoff at what's going
on. Oh,

yeah. Oh, you're not funny. Yeah.
This guy's a comedian.

I need, I need help with this joke. Okay,
somebody Imma tell you the nextpart. Yeah, the medicine man,
the shaman and the healer.
Remember, they argued, I reallyneed help with this. Okay,
because I can't get the lastpart. Okay? So they remember,
they all headed out into thewoods. They're going to find a
mountain lion for helper. That'snot going to prove who's the

(01:14:37):
best. So that well, then a fewweeks later, they all met back
up at the bar, you know, and sothe medicine man comes in. He
says, Hey, I found a mountainlion down by the river, and I
went up to him, and I gave himmy newly released book on the
Severn sacred teaching. Amazon.

(01:15:00):
And now he comes to my houseevery night in and sweats with
me in my co Ed sweat. So thenthe shaman says, Oh yeah, well,
I saw a mountain lion up therein a clear cut. And I gave him
one of my prayer kits that Isell on Amazon, you know, and he

(01:15:22):
loved it so much. Now he comesto my drum circle we have down
at the City Park. So the shamanand the medicine man turned to
the healer. I don't know what,what could you say?

It's make

this. I just made this up. I'm trying to think of
something funny that they Ithink

what's funny is how you changed your voice for the
medicine man.

Oh, yeah, well, the medicine man, you know,
because they

clearly was not your natural voice. I me,

that's my medicine man. Voice, Whoa,

he's vested. He's invested in this, in this joke.

I did. I got invested in it because I wanted
to challenge myself. I say,Okay, let me see how hard this
really is. How hard is it tomake a joke? It's really hard to
do. Man, it's hard to do. Andthat's a testament right there,
because I thought, well, yeah,these are funny things. Uh huh,
yeah, co Ed sweat gave him mybooks, and now I'm sweating with
a bunch of women in the mountainlion. That's kind of funny, I

(01:16:37):
guess. I don't know, but it'snot quite the punch line, right
the other guy, my pair of kidson Amazon, we're at the drum
circle down at the park that Ican't the punch line. That's the
hardest part. I know. I can'tthink of it anyway. That was a
testament to sort of the workthat you do. Because, like you
said, it's really situational,right? Because, because you

(01:16:59):
could probably draw inspirationfrom the crowd on what would be
next, right? Even though youdidn't have the joke locked in,
you're just kind of going withit, and you're feeding off the
crowd. You see, what's that?
Just like the joke you saidabout the about what white women
like, you know, moving on, onthe region. That's, you know,
that's just classic, funny stuffthat Indians do all the time

(01:17:20):
when we get together, right,right? Yeah, we just, we just go
off on things, and it's just, wejust laugh, yeah, and I think

you should change the joke. You should change the
joke.
I don't think it should be ashaman, a medicine man or here,
I think it should be somebipolar, someone with ADD and
someone with diabetes. And thechallenge is the same, though?

Yeah, that'd be funny, right? Okay, so ADHD,
what was the other one? What didyou say, diabetic and a bipolar
person walk into a bar, um,would they even argue though,
what, like, what was like? Werethey the

diabetics? Tickers down. They're arguing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. So they argue,
and then they Well, what do theydo? Then, what is the argument
about? Like, who's better athaving the

who has the worst diagnosis?

Who has the worst diagnosis, diagnosis? So then

what? There's one more caveat, all in denial of
these things,

whatever I want, what's bipolar? You know, 10
means, I don't knowthese hard to do. It's really
hard to do. This is what you

did when Nicole was on you you tried to get us to
make a round dance song, yeah,yeah, yeah. Well, you're like,
Aaron, I want you to freestylewith Nicole. And I'm like, This
is crazy.

Yeah, I was, I was trying to get
to that, you know, but, but

I think the joke, honestly, I I think the
joke would be more easier towrite if you could relate to
that, to to relate to it. Youknow what? I mean? Yeah, yeah.
What do you struggle with? Whatare you? Are you diagnosed with?
Anything, you know, all thosekind of things, like, something
that you can relate to, becausethen the joke form forms itself,
because now you're able torelate to going to get a

(01:19:36):
mountain line, like, what theyou know, like, Wouldn't it be
funny if

it was the same person. This joke was being told
as if it's three people, andthen the punchline is that it's
the same person, bipolar,diabetic, and add

full personality in there. I.

Yeah, I'm not far from that.

No, he gotta get all three of those. Well, you're
working on the diabetes,right? What are you eating? Man,
I'm

still eating those ribs. Or what are these called?
Burnt burnt ends.

That's the sodium of sodiums right there. That's
just a chunk of sodium. Man,you're just a chunk of

sodium. Don't be so salty.

And there we go.

There it is.
Should I go back to the oneliners? Yeah,

yeah. Honestly, that's the thing is, like with
comedy, you have to find yourniche. Like, where are you a one
liner? Are you a storyteller?
Are you, you know, like, youjust gotta, you just gotta keep
writing and find out eventually,you know, like singing, like
some people are better atSouthern than you know,
contemporary, like,

Oh no, yeah,

agreed with the artist, look, look at silicia. I
mean, maybe she's works betterwatercolor than acrylic or oil.
I don't know. She's beenpainting this whole time.

She's She only like, turns to look at us, to
laugh everyone.
I could tell when we're like,off track, because she'll turn
and look at us and give us afrown. She, like she gives that
confused.

Is mostly to Sean Dean, too. I'm trying

to hold this together. You

were gonna ask, I thought you were gonna
ask something else, but I Whatwas you gonna ask something
different? Or was it all aboutthis joke?

No, I mean, that was just like, like, what do
they call it? Self defecating. Iwas just self defecating on
myself. I

Oh, that'll smell funny in here. Deprecate means
something.

See, this is your joke, right there. Oh,

yeah. I was trying to have myself be the target of
ridicule. That was

it was a clever ruse, though,

because I'm not a joke. Writer, I don't write
jokes. That's pretty

evident.

Yeah.

Writer,

oh, I'm just kidding.
It was a good idea. I think it'sa good idea. Now

he's trying to build me back up. No, you're
okay. That's Indian humor.

Indian humor. Yeah, gonna knock you down, bro.

Why are you mad?
Why are you mad?

Let anybody tell you can't achieve your dreams?
Okay, I'm going to write a jokethat Casey is going to tell on
stage. Starts now. Okay, yeah,let's do it. Let's do it. Okay,
let me joke. No, we're going todo it right now. Okay, we do it
right now. Okay, here we go. So

wait, we gotta know anything to write a joke.
Yeah, yeah.

So we gotta, what's gotta be cutting edge so
new. We can't, we can't rely onthe common tropes that we
generally lean on. Why not?
Well, I guess we can. Well,what's new, what's new and
funny? What's new and funny?
Today, I'll tell you somethingnew and funny. Well, no, because

(01:23:44):
we already use them up. Man,what we joke about them all the
time. Nothing's new. Nothing'snew and funny. There's God, man,
we

joke about everything on this talk. In
fact, this is when we have acomedian on our podcast, and
this is the least funny I

know. And I know we

can do the prime example of what Casey was
saying, it's force. We'reforcing it. We're

forcing ruining it. We're ruining okay, we're
ruiningit. No, we're not going to ruin
it.

We're gonna.
We're not ruining it.

You're just bombing. We're

just bombing.
Okay, here's something new andsomething funny. It like, like
contemporary, native, thingsthat's new and that we can make
fun of.

That's hard, ain't it? Well, nothing's new.
Oh

man, wait, make fun of, yeah,

yeah, something new, though, something that we
haven't made fun of yet.

Oh, Lord, what? You're

not on mute. Say, Alicia, you're not on mute.

Oh, what did not get made fun of yet? Um,

we've made fun of Turtle Island. Made fun of the.
Medicine, wheel, ribbon, skirt,skirts, acknowledgements we've
made fun of and well we alwaysmake fun of conferences, native
conferences. Conferences, prettycommon. One, pretty common one.

(01:25:17):
Those are like squarely in well,because we're well,

we could have everybody introduce themselves.

No, I No. Wish it's clear that that's been
done. That's been done.
He's aim song. That's old,that's old news.

Something that's going on, fashion design.
We've

made fun of that dude. We hit the action show.
We've hit that. Aaron Prince,yeah, you want to, you want to
get him on a trigger. Aaron,he's talking about
decolonization, or nativefashion shows, he goes off, what

about cowboys?
What? What nativedressing like cowboys? Native

dressing is cowboy. I think we talked about
that, right? I think we hit thata little. What

did you say an inch? It's like,

I want to make one thing that drives me crazy is
when people change a letter in aword and they think it somehow
redefines the word,

like, delicious,

yeah, Like, resolution,

like, that's Casey's thing.

Yeah, yeah. Says rematriate,

trademarked

like rematriate. I still don't quite understand.

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

What about it?

Yeah, what the hell is it mean? Why is it different
than repatriate?

What is patriot? Oh, to bring back. Oh,
wait, what? And why is it? Whyis it? What

rematriate is?
It's like, it's like anindigenous women led work to
restore sacred relationshipsbetween indigenous people and
the land. That's it what? Yeah.
I mean, is it that? I mean, Ijust Googled, oh,

it's about Mother Earth. Oh, that's what
Google says. Yeah. Rematrite

is a concept used by indigenous women to describe
the practice of restoringrelationship between indigenous
people and their ancestrallands,

so it has no relevance to repatriate. So
does that mean the same asrepatriate?

I don't know.
What's repatriate,

something to do at museums, right? Yeah,

like

the Repatriation Act, but I mean, is that how
they're using the word?

I don't think so.
Repatriate is

to the land, to the land, returning

of a thing or person to its country of origin.
Do we have an issue with this?
Yeah, do we? Do we want to? Doyou want to do this with
repatriate?

I mean, I don't even really know
what it means, to be honest, butI hear it all the time, and I
I'm like, because I use the wehave to use the word
repatriation for work all thetime. So when I hear people say,
rematriate, is that just thereassigning of that word or,
like, I don't get it. I don'tunderstand it, because the way
they're using it, yeah, it. Idon't. It's never been clearly

(01:28:40):
defined, so I don't even know ifit's the same or if it is the
same. And they're just like, Idon't know. I don't know what
they're what they're doing.
Maybe I don't know even knowenough about it to make fun of
it.

Yeah, I think you don't. Maybe

we should wait to make fun of it. Wait,

yeah, I'm gonna learn about it, and then I'm
going to make fun of it. Let'sdo that. I don't know more.

That's, that's old man. I

don't remember this. I don't know where this.
That's old yet.

That's, oh,

I just kind of died like it just died. What died?
That movement, that whole, oh, Iknow. Remember, it was like,
hot, and then boom, it like, andit's like summer came and
everyone had something to do.
Yeah?

Tired of idling, that's for sure. Yeah,
yeah. Needed to move on. I don'tknow more they they literally
were doing what they wanted todo, and moved on from that.

It just died. Do you? Do you remember it on my
way in left field?

Yeah, I was there. I was like this in front
of the sign.

I was there in the mall singing that round dance
song. I.

A flash mob. I

flash mobbed at least twice. I was there

at least twice.
Against

me, flash mobs. I liked

how people thought they had to sneak their hand
drum into the mall so nobodywould see it. You know, just all
sudden busted out. You know, Iwas like, there's

200 Indian people walking into the mall with hand
drums under their shirts,nothing to see here,

and just a regular old Indian. I'm

just here to get some Cinnabon. I'm
not here to sing by thefountain.

Don't take your hand. Jumped Victoria,

please. Me About to pray something weird.

Nothing to see here, guys.

Okay, that's clearly been, yeah, I don't know
that's tough one. There's a lotof, well, the one I was talking
about the other day that's sortof new, this idea of extinction
and how I don't want to talkabout that. We don't want to do

(01:31:21):
that again. We don't do okay. SoI'm counting on silicia and
Aaron to think of something, andCasey to think, I don't think,
what, what? Yeah, that's a lotof pressure, man. Well, you
should have done this at the

beginning. We're going on an hour.

Well, we just need to do a list of things.

Okay, list of things. List of things.

What's off limits?
Let's say that.

Oh, yeah, awful.
That's a good one. Was there

stuff that was off limits

for me? There's very little
that's off limits. Yeah, that'sfor Sean Bean and the University
of BC, there's a lot, there'ssome

limits. Yeah, how about, um, you could be raised
out if, oh, yeah, man, maybe, Idon't know. What do you think
that's old, right? That's justrelying on some classic. I like
the one that we did, but wecouldn't get Aaron to engage
because he was this. No, hisblood sugar was off. Remember

(01:32:27):
places not to smudge? And hejust was wondering, what is
going on with you two? And we'regoing off on places that you
shouldn't smudge. Oh, yeah,yeah, I don't,

I don't remember this conversation at all
inappropriate

replaces the smudge. Yeah, on the

was it on the podcast?

Yeah, we did a whole bit on it, and I think
your blood, oh, you're in a comaor something.

I wasn't on it.
Have you been on the podcastbefore? Casey wasn't on.

Casey wasn't on.
It was first I can't rememberfirst time. First time. Was it
the first time? Yeah.

Man, for some

reason I thought you were on before

we talked about it, yeah. But 60 episodes later,
I'm on, yeah.

How about, um, places you should not, places
you shouldn't Fast, fast placesyou shouldn't try to find, get a
vision, I don't know. Oh, okay,okay, okay,

at the bar,

at a four way stop, people are gonna honk at
you. Yeah? This is, yeah, thatwouldn't work.

That's so hard. You remember that monk that sat in
that square and they set him onfire?

Wow, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that's

might be off limits. Exactly where my mind
went when you said that, ohyeah, when you said fast at a
four way stop, my brain wentstraight to Tibetan, Monk on
fire.

Man. I don't know.
Man, I I'm coming up with theblank here, things you shouldn't
wear to the native conference.
No, I don't work.

Those are all just, it's

like, it's the variant of what we already
talked about, right? You can

get and get into, like, real cliche stuff pretty
fast, yeah,

yeah, let's see.
How about things you shouldn'tpost on Facebook? No, it's
cliche, right?

Is it? Post on Facebook? How about,

appropriate places to wear a button up to? But what
about,

you know, a lot, a large portion of these Calvary
men who came over and fought inthe planes were Irish, yeah.

I mean, I didn't know that, but yeah,

I. Is it funny to think that? I've always thought
it was funny. How would an Irishguy die by an

Irish guy die?

How do you scream in an Irish accent?

I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I know
that's no no, no.

Hi, it's messed up because you didn't
talk about people dying, butit's like, it's such a unique
accent, yeah, how do you die?
Irish?

He's got himself going.

I mean, that could, that could go to
everything. How do you die? Imean, stereotypically too, like
anything Australian, you know,like, yeah,

yeah, yeah.

I mean, I want to know how you try Irish.

I don't know. I don't know a lot of Irish
things.
I don't know. Man, we're runningout, running out here, um,
solutions, thinking ofsomething. I know she is. She
stopped painting to think she'son she's on mute, though, so
she's trying to tell ussomething she's not sorry. I

had to blow my nose. I was thinking I always
see this guy a cowboy hat when Igo to work. Yeah. But it reminds
me of people who wear chokersfor some reason, okay, I
thought, Man, you can just wearchokers anywhere, like there's

(01:36:50):
nowhere you couldn't wear achoker, because I don't think
there's anywhere you couldn'twear a cowboy hat.

So when is not appropriate to wear choker,

I think you could just wear a choker
anywhere.

I think if you're getting a massage, you should
take it off, because they mightwant to work on your neck.
Right?

Yeah, for some reason the Joker does
not match massage table.

Yeah? Just gotta get that off,

yeah? Or

do they make you take a choker off when you're
going through TSA?

Have you ever tried it? I don't think so.
Every

way your chokers through TSA, no, you always take
it off. You always put it in,

make sure it's made of plastic, not real. You

can't use, you can't use shell casings. Yeah,
through TSA, shell casingchokers.

Oh, the shell. I haven't seen one of them in a
long I know. Yeah, that's like,that's like, 223,

and why?
Chokers? Why? Why? What's thereason for chokers?

What does it even mean? The showcase things
on the chokers. What is it? Imean,

how old are chokers? That's a good question.
You know,

they just made, or were they just adornments? Or
were they actually, aren't theyreally old?

Aren't they really old? I

think one of the I've never seen an old picture
of crows with a joke wearing.
I've seen a lot of necklaces.
You know,

I see, I see a lot of crows with chokers. Old
pictures again. Mr. TRP, whatare you? What is it? What? What
are you? Tribal research for?
Protection. What are you do?
What do you do?

Man, I don't know.
We've done 60 episodes. We'vedone 60 episodes together. DRP
report. Doesn't know what my jobtitle is. I just forgot it. I
forgot

it. Uh, oh, yeah.
Tip Oh. Tipo guy. Man, I'm gonnaGoogle one picture of a purple
Yeah, you know, this is what Iheard, or this is what I knew,
at least, from when I was a kid,right? When I was a kid, the
choker was to protect thewarrior from getting his throat
cut. You probably heard that,right?

I've never heard it.

That's what I went to that I'm of course, it's
probably not true, but that'swas the I've never seen an open

what, what solution? Oh, I was just trying
to remember what you were sayingin the beginning.

Oh, yeah. So I went through just some common
things, like, you know, we laughand we're humorous because we're
working through our trauma,false, but partially, right? And
we agreed on that, right? Didwe? No,

I think, I think that's, I think that that's,
that's a fact that native peopledeal with hardship. Let's say
hardship with humor we do. But Ireally like if we get anything
out of this podcast today, it'swhat Casey said, that, that
there's for, just for as much aswe do, that it's equal, that we
also have the other side ofthat. I can't remember exactly

(01:40:17):
what you said,

yeah, just you know, you got, you have your
whole spill over trauma, but youalso have all the feel, the the
survival, or the living or, youknow, like the the good stuff,
yeah, the positive energy. Iguess you got as much as you
have the negative, you have thepositive, you know, yeah, feel
or to be better, or theresources or the tools that have
been passed down as well. Not alot of people don't, you know,

(01:40:43):
take around, like and like Aaronsaid earlier, like that, we stay
in a we it's almost, it's almostencouraged, or a big flex, as
some people say to Yeah, to sayI'm traumatized, why can't say
I'm healed, I'm healing, or I'mhealed, I'm happy, I'm enjoying
life. I Yeah, you know, I'm, youknow, like, I have these, these

(01:41:03):
things passed on within me aswell to epigenetics. Yeah,
epigenetic epigenetics, this onemakes it

epigenetics, epigenetic

and further, furthermore, oh, go ahead,
Aaron, let's he's gotten I was

gonna say something, but now it has
passed.

So the next thing that, yeah, okay, go

ahead. Go ahead. I don't try to make the joke work.

I'm not. I'm just recapping. Go

the jokes doing, yeah, to

recap. Then we dispelled the myth that natives
use humor to test whethersomeone is native or not. False,
right?

I think false. I think yeah. We definitely use
humor to test if someone's cool,yeah, yeah, yeah, but I don't
think that has anything to dowith like their nativeness,
yeah.

And it's difficult also to capture the essence of
native humor via writing.
However, I would say there'ssome really good books out
there, books, though, becausethese are stories, right, that
are pretty funny from nativeauthors, but because it's a
story, but it's hard to just doone liners or like, on the fly
funny in writing, like toanalyze native humor in an

(01:42:30):
academic journal, probably a bithard to do. Seems like

it has to be done by a native person. Yeah, wasn't

good. I was gonna

say another thing I think would be really
interesting, interesting tolike, you know, weed out of this
the podcast too, is like, thedifference, the differences
between male and female humor,yeah, you know, yeah, you know,
like, what's the theunderstanding of those things as
well? Like, like, the power, Iguess the power, or the the

(01:43:04):
comedy structure, or the setup,because I know some set of some,
some jokes of mine make the makemore of the women laugh hard,
yeah, and then some of the otherones will make more of the men
laugh. But when I make this is,I'm not joking. When I make the
some, some of the the womenlaugh harder, like laugh hard.
The men quiet down, which isweird,

making them jealous, yeah?

Making people's wives laugh Casey. Yeah,

that's

that's something I noticed, but then
I'll point it out too, though,

you know, you still do that thing where you
take your shirt off andyou do something with your Oh,
that's not my only fans.
I don't know if you are. We'llput that in the show notes.

(01:44:01):
They're only send that over tome. Okay, we'll get you some
Casey drivers. Casey

dickelson, tickle,

yeah,

but I mean that honestly, coming back to that
honestly be something to like,you know, explore too. Like,
like, like, if you guys ever hada native or a female native
comedian, come on too, like, thedifferent perspectives, yeah,
how jokes are brought up, andwhere they come from, and, yeah,
you know, it's, it's, it's quitethe different perspective, just

(01:44:39):
a different style, I guess you'dsay yeah, on how they viewed
humor, yeah, yeah,

and, and Sean Dean's gonna try to get him to
with that joke again. Yeah,Shaman, a healer, shaman

and a medicine healer in a medicine man, we're
gonna get that down. Who neededto go get a bipolar. Yeah, oh
yeah, bipolar, bipolar, ADHD,ADHD

and diabetic, diabetic Cougar,

marry one, kill one and

man. But I think in the end, I think we we
discover what we already reallyknow is that, I mean you, as a
professional in comedy, you workat a different level of of
understanding the crowd, right?
Because you work with a large,large crowd, and the diversity
of people in that crowd, theycould be somewhat homogeneous,
but they could be prettyheterogeneous, if you will. But

(01:45:40):
like for the Everyday Guy andthe everyday Indian gal, you
know, we work in, we we laughin, like a tight community of
people that we're familiar withor that we can share some common
understandings, like nits, yousay knits and people laugh. You
say, speaker wire and peoplelaugh. Maybe not these days,

(01:46:03):
like kids don't understand thestruggle of what you had to do
to fix things and how handyspeaker wire was. So these days,
like the generations, they don'tunderstand that speaker wire pop
can to fix your muffler. They'relike, Oh, I don't understand any
of that. So I really, like thenative comedian, has to really,
it seems to me, has to navigateall those things, plus the

(01:46:25):
generational differences ofwhat's funny and what's not
that's super, super challenging.
And I see that in some of thework that I do, the students, I
see their age, they have adifferent level of need of what
they think is funny, what theythink is interesting and how you
ought to deliver that to them.
But, you know, it's somethingthat we can't capture. That's

(01:46:47):
that's one of the problems withacademics, and with with putting
things in, pay in, in a paper,it's really hard to capture that
and make it authentic and true.
And it can really skew what thatis, and it can really generate
the wrong idea about how weoperate in our communities and

(01:47:08):
how we how we function with withhumor across different
generations. So that, I mean,that's kind of the message I was
trying to get across the thingsI was trying to discuss those
challenges and how it really is.
Now, I think everyone here was abit shy. I was only one who put
myself out there, selfdefecating. Dang,

God dang,

pretty dumb, yeah.
So I don't know you, tell me.
Tell me some last parting wordsof kind of the work, the
intersection of what you do andhow you try to maintain some
sort of authenticity that'srepresentative of you and you
the community and the peoplethat you grew up with, yeah, and

I think the biggest part of that is being
like you said authentic, beinggenuine, not not being over
like, not being too over thetop, where you're like you feel
like you're trying too hard tomake people laugh or to like you
Because of your own struggles,your own traumas, your own

(01:48:22):
internal, you know, battles thatyou're having within yourself,
trying to heal yourself bytrying too hard like be be
authentic. Be real. Be genuineas a comedian, as the native
comedian, and be okay withdrawing stories from the the
uncles or, you know, the thefamily or the cousins, or the
pow wow circle, or whatever itmay be like, pulling those

(01:48:45):
pulling that and share it. I, inmy opinion, share it, not with
only the native people, but fornative, the native, the non
native community that's outthere, because they have to
learn from they get. They haveto learn from those books that
are being very still butstereotypically written about
us, those one liner jokes likethat's where they get their
information, and no one's goingto know about our humor or the

(01:49:08):
way we laugh or the way we talkor the way we tease. By reading
books, we, as native comedians,have to go out there and tell
our story, you know, throughthrough our our stories, through
our jokes. Yeah, and that's theway I feel I'm doing is like,
I'm going into these non nativecrowds, and I'm giving them a
good dose of how they thinkabout us, you know, how they

(01:49:30):
view us. And I'm, I'm turning itaround where it's not only a
funny joke, but it's a lesson.
Like, you guys really thinkwe're, we're want to be, you
know, we're we scream around andwe were crying around, you know,
I mean, so here, this is whatyou think about, but on the
other side, this is who wereally are. Welcome to our land.
This is the struggles we have,this, this, I'm human being. I
have the same, you know,struggles as you as, as you

(01:49:54):
know, whatever you may be,whether it be economic, social,
uh. You know, spiritual,whatever, maybe, yeah, but
really trying to, you know, Ifeel as a native comedian, that
not only am I trying to makepeople laugh, but also tell a
story and to teach, yeah, youknow. So they're like, Hey, do
they really, you know, makethat, that make it very thought

(01:50:15):
provoking, you know, yeah, and,and I hope one day you know that
we, some of us, comedians orproducers or camera people, can
together and actually do areally good documentary of
native humor on camera. Youknow, that'd be awesome. You
know, where you see comediansoffstage, on stage, doing their

(01:50:36):
thing. But also you see the thereally tight knit circle of of
real like, you know, likeeveryday comedians are teasing
uncles or clans or, you know,women, you know, teasing around
in a circle about their exes,you know. I mean, who knows? You
know, it could go everywherewith it, and it'll only probably
would be an hour and a half twohour documentary, but it'd be so

(01:50:56):
beneficial to so many, even ourown people. You know, yeah,
about the art of comedy. Youknow about the art of humor, I
guess you'd call it, but yeah,

forever. For where the sun never stands. I shall
speak no more. Okay, awesome,man. Um, yeah, we're going to
have you back, maybe even, maybeeven the next episode. So you
can finish that joke for me, soyou can use it you might tell

(01:51:43):
stage

that I use some of it. I

could use some citations. All we ask

is, you make it funny.

I think it not being funny is funny.

I know this guy tried to tell me this joke.
Yeah,

no, okay,

our only ask is that you make it funny. Awesome,
man. Well,

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#61 - From Trauma to Teasing: The Epigenetics of Indigenous Humor - Guest: Kasey Nicholson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#61 - From Trauma to Teasing: The Epigenetics of Indigenous Humor - Guest: Kasey Nicholson