Watchlist: ‘What Do Native Cultures Have in Common?: Ep 6 of CrashCourse Native American History’

By Kamiah Koch

Social media/digital journalist

In the latest installment of the widely popular educational YouTube channel, CrashCourse, Native comedian Che Jim (Navajo and Odawa) shares a video on a commonality found among many Tribes: Natives know how to have fun!

“If you believed everything the media tells you, you’d think all Native Americans were stoic and serious,” Jim said. “Always serving ‘resting Indigenous face’ and spouting some next-level wisdom with a single tear streaming down their cheek. But really, humor and fun have been part of Native culture and world view for generations.”

Jim noted that when archeologists are digging at Native American sites, they often find dice made from animal bones, leather balls and sticks with straps used for the traditional game called “stickball,” and something that resembles a wooden version of a NERF gun.

“Natives have long considered laughter to be what we call ‘good medicine’ or anything that promotes the healing or wellbeing of mind, body or spirit,” Jim said.

Here in Grand Ronde, the Tribal Health & Wellness Department often hosts “good medicine” events in the Tribal gym, where families can play games, win prizes and eat together.

Many Tribes consider humor to be sacred, Jim said. An example of this can be found in the Pueblo people who have clowns or tricksters at traditional ceremonies and act out funny scenes with life lessons hidden within them.

Christian missionaries and colonizers who documented these tricksters often didn’t get the joke and interpreted them incorrectly (mostly because they were the target of the joke).

The depiction of Natives in media and movies has long been stereotyped and has not shown the cultural significance good medicine like laughter has in Tribal communities.

However, there are now comedy shows like “Reservation Dogs” and “Rutherford Falls” that were created by Native people and show humor is important to Native culture and shares that with a wider audience.

Jim says that the ability to laugh at oppressors and poke fun at serious things helps take back a little bit of power from those hierarchies and returns it to Natives.

You can watch the rest of this CrashCourse video and other videos on Native American history at shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMa2feSIiQ.