"Knock 'em dead! Knock 'em Red!" That is what I heard a friend of Aboriginal author Drew Hayden Taylor call to him as he took to the stage at this year's Festival of the Written Arts. Taylor joked about both Aboriginal and Caucasian people. He is one of few people who can get away with it. The man is a self-described "Occasion" - part Ojibwa and part Caucasian.
Taylor said what makes one group of people laugh makes everyone laugh. I am sure humour changes with geography as much as it does by culture, so I don't pretend to know about all Aboriginal humour, only that of the folks who have teased me with great joy.
My Cree friends have a sense of humour that tends to put white people off balance the first couple of times they experience it, which in and of itself is funny to witness. They either tease with dramatic admonishment or deadpan dry wit - like my friend Leon, who told me to stop trying to speak Cree because "language is the only weapon Indians have left against the white man."
"But Leon," I sputtered, "I studied it for three years in university."
"Oh! But you speak like a white woman. Stop!" my friend's kokum (grandmother) pleaded.
Leon Charles is a third-term band councillor for Grand-mothers Bay, a remote village that is part of the Lac la Ronge Indian Band in northern Saskat-chewan. He can be cunning in his ability to lead me down the rabbit trail, only to have a good laugh at and with me. And I am ridiculously gullible enough to be duped repeatedly by him after 12 years of friendship.
Leon deals with the most serious of issues on a daily basis where unemployment, suicide and poverty affect his community's members at an alarming rate, and so I am continuously amazed at how quick he is to laugh and make others laugh. He focuses his attention on promoting sport, education and employment for the youths of Grandmothers Bay. I have heard of great people just like him who are members of the Sechelt Nation, and I look forward to being punked by them.
Sometimes I think our country's climate has become so tense because of historical wrong-doings and non-Aboriginal people being terrified of saying the wrong thing that we have forgotten how to laugh along with our Aboriginal neighbours, how to kid one another and how to laugh at ourselves.
I have been purposefully hosed down by tilted up boat propellers, reprimanded for my fish filleting technique, lured to the wrong destination by plotting children who only wanted a ride in my car and teased mercilessly in Cree for my poor softball skills. Tone and body language told me all I needed to know in that instance.
To survive the humour of First Nations friends, you must develop wit quickly or grow a thick skin, because no one is exempt from good-intentioned harassment. I learned if you're being teased, belittled, scolded or corrected by an Aboriginal person, it might just mean they like you. Watch for that delayed laugh as they wait to see if you got the joke. Mind you, if you have to wait and watch to find out, you've already been had - again!
