Tribal Research Specialist: The Podcast
Tribal Research Specialist: The Podcast tackle real issues related to research by Tribal people in their communities. The show is hosted by Dr. Shandin Pete (Salish/Diné) and Aaron Brien (Apsáalooke). Dr. Pete is from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Arlee, Montana. He completed a M.S. in Geology and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Montana. Brien resides in Hardin, MT and the Crow Indian Reservation. He completed his M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Montana. The show includes discussions on matters important in Indian Country, including reclaiming research traditions, highlighting Tribal values and bringing to the forefront issue and current state of affairs in Tribal communities. We aim to uncover the meaning of research methodological approaches that are currently operating in Tribal lifeways with implication for Tribal communities and avenues for knowledge production.
Tribal Research Specialist: The Podcast
#61 - From Trauma to Teasing: The Epigenetics of Indigenous Humor With Guest: Kasey Nicholson
Code-Switching & Cultural Banter 0:00:00
Trauma, Humor, and Healing 0:15:00
Counselor to Comedian 0:35:00
Joke Anatomy 101 0:55:00
Academic Comedy Fails 1:15:00
The Art of Native Teasing 1:35:00
Generational Laughs 1:55:00
Breaking Stereotypes 2:15:00
Guest: Kasey Nicholson (A’aa’niii’nin) https://www.rezzalicious.com/
Hosts: Aaron Brien (Apsáalooke), Salisha Old Bull (Salish/Apsáalooke), (Shandin Pete (Salish/Diné).
How to cite this episode (apa)
Pete, S. H., Brien, A. & Old Bull, S. A. (Hosts). (2025, February 25). # 61 - From Trauma to Teasing: The Epigenetics of Indigenous Humor With Guest: Kasey Nicholson [Audio podcast episode]. In Tribal Research Specialist:The Podcast. Tribal Research Specialist, LLC. https://tribalresearchspecialist.buzzsprout.com
How to cite this podcast (apa)
Pete, S. H., & Brien, A. (Hosts). (2020–present). Tribal Research Specialist:The Podcast [Audio podcast]. Tribal Research Specialist, LLC. https://tribalresearchspecialist.buzzsprout.com/
Podcast Website: tribalresearchspecialist.buzzsprout.com
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tribal-research-specialist-the-podcast/id1512551396
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/1H5Y1pWYI8N6SYZAaawwxb
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Website: www.tribalresearchspecialist.com
What are you guys doing going on here?
Shandin Pete:We're just waiting for old Aaron to log in
Salisha Old Bull:on Aaron waiting on Aaron
Kasey Nicholson:be painting
Salisha Old Bull:tea peas,
Kasey Nicholson:pee pees, yeah,
Shandin Pete:enunciate that a little better.
Salisha Old Bull:He pees with the tea.
Shandin Pete:Pees, yeah. Man, where you at right now, in
Kasey Nicholson:my apartment or townhouse, in Billings, Billings, Billings, billets, Billings.
Shandin Pete:Anybody ever say that anymore? Billing that billings
Salisha Old Bull:in your PI editor, in my peer to tear and
Kasey Nicholson:billing some I think some of them still do. I'll go build, go shop bills and go to mall and shop at Bent she's been asking, and he probably still says it, yeah, but I'm
Shandin Pete:gonna ask him right when he comes on, yeah? I'm gonna ask him to say it Yeah, without prompting. He's gonna say, oh, what? Buildings, yeah, yeah. He's not gonna do it. He's got to be around a bunch of crows. Then he'll switch. He'll code switch. That's
Kasey Nicholson:always, hey, happen? That's what we all do. I know, man, I don't I don't speak Bella unless I'm around Belknap. Nobody else gets it, nobody else gets it, and no one else knows how to speak it. Everyone gets
Shandin Pete:offended. Yeah. So I got those guys just rude here. That's just the way it goes, you know. But, yeah, hey, you know,
Kasey Nicholson:speak the lingo, and if you don't, then shut up, shut up,
Aaron Brien:shut up. Oh yeah,
Shandin Pete:it's we've been holed up in our house all day. Why? Just recovering from
Salisha Old Bull:the week, last week, from last week? Yeah, just
Shandin Pete:we're, we're hard workers. Okay, okay, all right, I know I don't understand why people don't understand why I always got to explain myself about how hard I work. Let it out. Safe Place, safe space. Always asking me, How you doing, how you doing? I'm doing horrible, and I work hard. Okay, just get on my back. I got a bunch of kids, and I gotta feed them, and everybody needs me for something. And I'm tired of asking, I'm tired of being asked how I am
Kasey Nicholson:How are you then, really, really, come on, we're getting to the core of it. Come on. Just,
Shandin Pete:we're just peeling off. Yeah, we are order shell. Remember,
Kasey Nicholson:I was a counselor at one time. That was just,
Shandin Pete:oh yeah, yeah. That's gonna You might lose your license. Better not say that I
Kasey Nicholson:shouldn't even get my license. Oh,
Shandin Pete:you didn't. Oh, you're like a back alley counselor. Hey, yeah, I'm here. Yeah, come back here. I'm gonna free you from the chains of addiction.
Kasey Nicholson:You see brain time hide. Come on. Man,
Shandin Pete:roll up in a van with the couch. Hey, get in. Yeah,
Kasey Nicholson:like some of those massage those, those Asians that do massage therapy, I don't know if they even have licenses.
Shandin Pete:You need license to be massage therapist.
Kasey Nicholson:I don't know Montana. I'm not sure.
Shandin Pete:Does it sound like you knew? Sound like you had some advanced knowledge?
Kasey Nicholson:Just guessing, because you don't have to have you don't have to have license.
Shandin Pete:Oh, there you go. That was a, that was a semi confident, oh, just guessing. Yeah, that's the, that's the exit route for everything it is, you know, I just guessing.
Aaron Brien:I don't know maybe.
Shandin Pete:Hey, Aaron, it's Casey. Nicholson.
Kasey Nicholson:Oh, it's Aaron. What's up? Bruh, well, when
Aaron Brien:he said, Casey, I was like,
Salisha Old Bull:Casey. Casey.
Aaron Brien:Casey woke person from
Shandin Pete:Hey, Aaron, yo, keep going. Which gonna get
Aaron Brien:up? No, I'm gonna eat. I gotta eat, ah, crepes. Hey, I want
Shandin Pete:you to do something for me. Yeah, I want you to say billings,
Aaron Brien:Billings,
Shandin Pete:yeah. See,
Kasey Nicholson:see, Billings,
Shandin Pete:Billings.
Kasey Nicholson:You say, G,
Shandin Pete:No, you said, I absolutely like
Kasey Nicholson:he did it without a G,
Shandin Pete:like a full blown American, yeah? Billings, what are you
Aaron Brien:guys talking about? We're talking
Shandin Pete:about you. We're we're asking Casey where he was at and he he didn't do a full code switch when he said where he was at because he's kind of in, what do they call it? In academics there knows what it's called. He's in the diaspora.
Aaron Brien:Diaspora. Diaspora sounds
Shandin Pete:like a fungus, right?
Salisha Old Bull:Anyways, sound right. I know
Shandin Pete:it doesn't sound right. So he so he did her code switch to his, his normal,
Kasey Nicholson:his desk, bro, his ass assy, bro.
Shandin Pete:I before you get before you get carried away, before let's give Aaron a chance to what are you eating first, what are
Kasey Nicholson:you eating? What are you eating?
Aaron Brien:Brought me famous Davis.
Shandin Pete:Oh, decolonizing barbecue.
Aaron Brien:Indigenized.
Shandin Pete:Indigenizing. Barbecue, yeah, I'm gonna, um, want to I want you to listen to something. Okay, I do. I want you to listen to something here, um, all of us, all of you. I want you to pay attention. I want you to I want you to act right and listen. This is a song shared to me. Children are shared to me through many generation of tape recorders. No, it's not that special, but check it out. Can you hear it?
Kasey Nicholson:Good dancing.
Shandin Pete:We just got into it. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you can see that tape. Yeah, you see it? Yeah? See the year. Yeah. More Bellman. Stop talking.
Kasey Nicholson:Dance. Don't ever wait for me to start dancing. Everybody dance now. On the song now, Y'all got it now? Shout.
Shandin Pete:You. Oh, yeah, raise it up forever, you.
Kasey Nicholson:In the forever,
Shandin Pete:there you go. Man, how you like
Aaron Brien: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. Sean Dean was bangers, man, I know the one from this episode was good too.
Shandin Pete:Oh yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, Fort Belknap, 1977 that's from that's from your neck of the woods there. Casey, yeah.
Kasey Nicholson:Bell, no, you
Shandin Pete:recognize who that was? I don't know who it is,
Kasey Nicholson:but could either be haze, or there's a couple, there's a Bobby Bobtail or something. No iron, iron child, no iron. What's that one? They were, you know, by Bobby iron maker, saying with,
Shandin Pete:I don't know, there's a lot of region,
Kasey Nicholson:one of the older songs, or older drum groups, one of the first drum groups that came out there. God, that's what it sounds like. Anyways,
Shandin Pete:I believe it. I believe it. Hey, my mind going here now I'm going to do something, okay, and we're going to, we're going to finish this by the end of this recording, but it's going to require you all to keep this going. Okay, you ready? You ready? Just say Yeah. Somebody say yeah. You're ready, okay, okay, you're going to keep this going, not right now, but you're going to think about it. Okay, so a medicine man, a shaman and a healer, they walk into a bar. Would you get that? Okay? I mean, it's almost funny as it is, right? A shaman, a medicine man and a healer walk into a bar, and then, um, they start arguing about who's the best at what they do. Got it? Okay, then you're going to finish that, not right now, but I got a bit. I got a different question, and this one's, I don't I don't know about it. I don't know about it. And I'm curious about what you think, what all three of you think about this, because I'm on the fence about it. So there's this. I don't know if it's a stereotype. I don't know if it's I don't know how real it is, but apparently Indians laugh at everything, and we have this, apparently, a unique sense of humor that is unique to Native people. Furthermore, furthermore, that unique humor is and and that, well what we're known for, we use it as a way to heal and or hide our trauma. You heard that before, right? You heard that, yeah, Aaron heard it, heard it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what do you think about that? I I don't know. I did it. You did it. I.
Aaron Brien:You did what. I've done it. I've done it. I've used humor to hide my trauma. Yes,
Shandin Pete:okay, all right, okay,
Kasey Nicholson:yeah, yeah, I've never
Aaron Brien:not done it.
Salisha Old Bull:I've never not done it.
Shandin Pete:You've never done okay, so, so this is the question that I have then it so, because it sounds like you all believe that, right? Yeah, okay, good point, yeah. Well, Casey's thinking about it. He's thinking, Okay, should I believe it, or should I not? I mean, do you believe it? You probably said it before, right? You probably said it before to people, we laugh because it's, it's, it's the medicine we use to heal ourselves from the wrongs of the past, yeah?
Kasey Nicholson:Well, not in those exact words,
Shandin Pete:not in those words like, wow, wow. Yeah, that was boring.
Aaron Brien:Not gonna make I think, I think academic background could shed some light on some of this.
Shandin Pete:Well, I'm so, this is what I'm wondering then. So then let's, let's
Aaron Brien:hear from I don't, well, I have nothing to say. Well, I want
Shandin Pete:to rewind. I want to rewind the clock a bit. So let's go back 1000 years. Did were we still like that, or were we really boring then? Because it wasn't the same amount of trauma? Were we pretty boring 1000 years ago? Not funny.
Aaron Brien:That's way too hypothetical, but I'm gonna say that I imagine there was some level of sense of human in Native people, okay, yeah, because
Kasey Nicholson:when you see one of your fellow warriors fall off a horse or trying to hunt a buffalo, and they freaking, hey, go head over heels in front of a woman that they're trying to impress, yeah, you know, it's going to be told in the camps. You know, after, the deeds are done, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna talk and they're like, Oh man, I know they're gonna. You're gonna. Because I think, honestly, I think a lot of their the the laughter and the storytelling, all that stuff is, I honestly do, really think, obviously, genetically, just in like, and not even like, you know, you could go tribalistically, or whatever you want 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 and yeah, and through, I guess, trauma as well too. Okay, I just think it's just inherently within epigenetically, if you want to go that route, whoa. Here
Aaron Brien:we go. Here
Shandin Pete:we go. Epigenetic Okay, how did you, how do you spell that? Yeah, look at this up. I gotta look that one up, yeah,
Aaron Brien:say it again. Casey, yeah, play it
Kasey Nicholson:again. Epigenetics, medically,
Shandin Pete:pretty much, pretty much meaning that things are passed down, yeah, the DNA.
Aaron Brien:So one was free of charge, oftentimes,
Shandin Pete:yeah, associated times, associated with the passing down of trauma, right? I heard that one quite a bit, you know. But, and that's the thing,
Kasey Nicholson: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 of that too. Like, the healing is also passed down as well, sure, the, you know, the funny stuff, or the the crazy stuff that also is passed down. But a lot of people get so focused on the trauma part of it, I'm like, Yeah, well, there's the other part too. Like, there's our genetics hold a lot of stuff within our, you know, within us, there's other things that get passed on beyond Yeah, you know. So, yeah, yeah,
Aaron Brien:yeah, you're right. I think Casey's Right. Like, we get stuck in that, huh? We do see it a lot, and actually, in fact, it seems like it's almost encouraged to stay stuck in that,
Shandin Pete:yeah, yeah,
Salisha Old Bull:stuck in the trauma. Well,
Aaron Brien:I guess in that part of it, you know, yeah,
Shandin Pete:that's, that's kind of why I was bringing it up, is because oftentimes you see Native humor, uh, distinctly attached to trauma when I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't think it always is. I think we just like to laugh and have fun. You know? I don't think it's because, because of the genocide, or whatever you want to call it, the whatever this thing, the things that happen, yeah, maybe we're just this is people love to laugh, right? Some people would even say, like, the collective laugh of a whole entire race can reveal the secret quantities or qualities
Kasey Nicholson:we. Laughing. We are laughing now.
Aaron Brien:I'm going to go ahead and leave
Shandin Pete:the get to something here. Yeah, I mean, you could say that, I don't know you could say you could even say that maybe humor, even the humor and the laughter is connected to even deeper constructs than just the trauma, such as spirituality or the understanding of the unknown. I don't know. What do you think about that?
Kasey Nicholson:Yeah, I think again. Oh, yeah. Well, I my, my brain, my mind, was going everywhere, every which way. But honestly, I mean, I mean, if you want to break it down and boil it down, I mean, energy, it's straight. I mean, this is my opinion, energy, yeah, and that laughter, that that, that energy that comes with that laughter, yeah, um, is, is contagious. It. You can feel it. You can feel laughter. But how that person is sending the laughter versus the person receiving it? Obviously, that goes into a whole nother construct of, you know, trauma or being able, have they been teased, you know, all those other kind of things. But I think, you know, keep it simple. I think that the energy of that laughter is like, it's, it's crazy, it's, it's, well, you know, cliche, but it's powerful. I really do. It's, it's, man, if you like you guys, like when you guys laugh, like all three of all, we all start laughing. We could get into some gut busting and nothing, like we just beat off each other's laughs, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's not like we're people, oh, they're they're traumatized, yeah. And it must have needed that healing. That's why they're laughing so much. They needed that healing. No, we're laughing because we're freaking some goofy people. Like, we love Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, why does it gotta be complicated? Why does it gotta be so, yeah, you know, I don't know. I don't Yeah,
Shandin Pete:okay, yeah, see, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so this is the thing. So I think it's fair to say that we don't laugh just because we're hurting. We laugh because it's just a human it's a human quality to to, I don't know, to just joke around and have a good time, right? Well, apparently there's a well, I don't know. I don't know if this is true or not, but this is what I want to ask all of you here. Are there? Are there? Is, could you classify Like Put, put the humor into different categories that make sense, that natives use. Could you classify it like, this kind of, this kind of native humor is all this, like one thing, like, like, teasing. You know, teasing is the type of humor, right, where you're directing it at somebody, and you're making everybody laugh. And then maybe there's another type of humor where you're sort of telling a story, and in that story, there's funny parts. And I'm wondering if there's categories like that that you see in your in your experience. I
Kasey Nicholson:Yes, yes, yes.
Shandin Pete:Well, what are they? Man, what are they?
Kasey Nicholson:That's what I want to know. You name two already. I would say you name two. Come on. Okay, yeah. I named two, yeah. And then there's one where the discomfort, that's another one discomfort, the uneasy, the uneasiness of things where you get the nervous laughter. Here's the story really quick of a category. One category, okay, um, one of my relatives was getting their butt whipped by their dad getting spent. I got scared, like, hopefully this is crazy, yeah, but I focused on my my relatives face while they're getting spanked, and then I started laughing.
Shandin Pete:Is joking about, like, diabetes? Is that kind of the same kind of thing, survival, man.
Aaron Brien: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 a anything, we'll joke. But I do think that the teasing part of humor, yeah, it's probably like a huge part of, like native that seems like getting it, it seems like laughter at the expense of somebody else. Seems to be a big part of even the way we like self govern, you know, yeah,
Shandin Pete:I think you're right. I think you're right. Some. Some people even think that, like, you could even use, you could even use native humor as, sort of like a criteria to know, like, who, where people are from, or even if they're from, or sort of what their background is right. Like, because if you, if you mercifully tease somebody and they can't take it, I mean, I mean, you could sort of tell, like, what their upbringing was, you know, in a particular way, and I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, what do you think about that? You think that's true? Yeah,
Aaron Brien:good degree. I think, I think due to a degree. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't want to assume that I would say not everybody that I grew up with that's the same type of humor I do, yeah, but I would say every single person I grew up with Yeah, knows how to tease. Oh yeah. They don't all have like, they don't all have like, maybe, let's just stay for the sake of conversation, there's four types of humor. That's just the made up number, okay,
Shandin Pete:for the four directions,
Kasey Nicholson:for the four directions, for the
Aaron Brien:four four humors, the sacred four humors, the
Shandin Pete:four sacred humors, yeah, yeah. We'll come up with more. So then we'll make it seven.
Salisha Old Bull:Seven, yes,
Aaron Brien:yeah. So I would say most native people in our like area, yeah, region, yeah. They don't have all four, but every one of them is going to have some level of the teasing. Yeah, I don't think I've ever met a native person that doesn't know how to tease a little bit. I've met a lot of native people that don't know how to get teased, though. Oh yeah,
Shandin Pete:they get hurt. They try to fight you. Just leave.
Aaron Brien:So I think maybe we're native. A lot of us are, like, expert trollers, you know, is that's really what it is. Like, you'll troll somebody Yeah, like you smell blood and yeah, just like you go in, you know, yeah,
Shandin Pete:yeah and yeah and yeah. Maybe
Aaron Brien:that's wrong. Basically shaking and said at me, like, but
Shandin Pete:no, that's, we're about healing. No, there's even okay. So there was, I was reading this brief article about Native humor, just to see what was out there in in the literature, you know, academic literature, and one researcher suggested that native humor is also used as a means of testing for anyone whose identity as a native person is questionable or unknown. Did you ever do that? Somebody? No, no. I mean, it seems wrong, right? Like, I'm gonna find out
Aaron Brien:test to see if I wanted to hang out with somebody. Yeah, somebody was cool, regardless if they're a native or not. Like, yeah, kind of like, test your boundaries, and you're like, wow, this person seems pretty serious, like a a serious person, but it's situational, yeah? Casey, know this? Like, Oh, good. Like, say you go to Apollo and you're going to sing all weekend with a drum group. In all honesty, you don't want to sit at a drum with Ultra serious people. No. Like, because you're, you're stuck there right for 678, hours. Oh, yeah, so, but that those type of people might be cool in a different situation, but for me, power policy in the recreation. So I want to enjoy myself. I want to laugh, I want to tease. I want to hear good stories. So yeah, I don't want to see really rigid yeah and
Kasey Nicholson:yeah, I think there's one part of it too. Like, um, like, I think sometimes some natives will push that not, not to test necessarily, but to see how genuine that person is at their conference. Like, kind of what Aaron was saying, like, you're going to surround yourself with some, you know, singing bros, yeah. You want to kind of figure out, like, hey, like, how genuine are these guys? Like, how real, you know, how authentic? Yeah, I think authentic people. I think, in my opinion, some authentic people are really able to let loose and laugh and tease and joke, enjoy, and that's the biggest thing, is enjoy, enjoy the moment that life, or whatever it is, and, yeah, you know. And I think that's part, and part of that testing thing is like, how genuine are you, you know, are you laugh at yourself? Are you able to laugh with us, you know, or whatever? So that, yeah, yeah, would be another part. I agree.
Aaron Brien:I. Could laugh at a funeral, if he can.
Kasey Nicholson:It's true. It's true. It is true.
Shandin Pete:Yeah, so I think that's somewhat, somewhat of a of a miss, misapplication of native humor that I find in the literature now. And there was this other thing, oh, wait, let me get let me get to the second. Did you guys think about the remember the medicine man, the shaman and the healer? They walk into the bar and they start, completely forgot about it. Okay, medicine man, Shaman in the healer, walk into a bar to get an argument, right? So eventually they say, Okay, this is it. We're going to we just have to prove who's the best, who's the best at what we do. So what we're going to do this? They all agree we're going to do we're going to go into the woods. We're all going to go into the woods in different directions, and we're, we'll see who can get a mountain lion for a helper. So they all go off go find a mountain lion for a helper. Now you're going to finish 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 get you rating on these jokes. Okay, this is, this is this is straight 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 is this. These are apparently one liners that are employed by Native people called razzing. Yeah, part of the, part of the apparently, apparently, part of the nature of teasing and razzing is to keep yourself humble among the group. I don't know about that? Okay, here we go.
Kasey Nicholson:I'm more humble.
Shandin Pete:Okay, so a native artist was asked one day why Indians. Was asked one day on why Indians were the first ones on the continent, and he replied, we had reservations. It gets worse. It gets worse. Okay, gone. I kind of almost passed out. Okay, uh, here's another one. Are you a full blooded Indian? The reply, no, I'm a pint low. I just came from the blood bank. Oh, stupid. Okay,
Salisha Old Bull:wow.
Shandin Pete:Okay, one more. One more. Okay, here we go. You can probably and you could probably guess the answer, are you ready? Do Indians have psychic powers? Do you know the answer? Do you know Aaron the reply? I knew you're going to ask me that I just knew it.
Aaron Brien:Oh, oh, what are you doing? Dude,
Kasey Nicholson:jokes, let them bees.
Aaron Brien:Yeah, let him bomb. Let the bomb happen. Naturally.
Kasey Nicholson:Don't refuse. I'm just
Shandin Pete:generally, to, I'm just trying to give you a taste of what's written about Native humor, the
Kasey Nicholson:things that are the written by native humor, and are these like this is a scholarly written, yeah, peer reviewed, all that jazz, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. This should be eye
Shandin Pete:opening to you. This should be upsetting to you. Okay, how do you insult a Indian? This is bad. This is a bad one. Call him or her a Columbus lover.
Aaron Brien:No,
Shandin Pete:no, no, no. You want to hear more?
Aaron Brien:I kind of do. Okay. Got me intrigued by these.
Shandin Pete:Okay, here we go. This is peer reviewed research. Man, this is what's getting pumped out, and people are reading and quoting and citing about us. Okay, what's the difference between praying in church and praying at a casino? Yeah. What at a casino? You really mean it? Oh, yeah.
Salisha Old Bull:So weird.
Shandin Pete:It is weird. Okay, so here's the problem, here's the problem. We I just walked you through some serious misconceptions about Native humor in the literature that young, impressionable native scholars are reading, that non native people are reading, and that doesn't quite hit the mark. Man, it doesn't quite hit the mark, and I want to try to help it hit the mark. So I'm curious. Then, I don't know. I don't know how I could go about and write an academic article and do a better job. I don't know if I could do that, so I didn't, I don't know, but what I'm curious what, what I
Aaron Brien:was gonna say humor is kind of like time stamps too, like it is what was neat to like our dad and our our grandparents. My is different to us. I mean, obviously there's overlap, but I imagine, if you're going to do an academic study on jokes, that's probably where 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,
Shandin Pete:yeah, it seems hard to
Aaron Brien:commit. You gotta jump in, buddy. Yeah,
Shandin Pete:it seems hard to commit that. Like, what? Like the real, organic nature of humor in written words. So Alicia was reading a book recently. What was it called? Remember that book? Well, I can't remember what it was called, but it started out kind of okay, like it was about Native humor, but then it went off the rails quickly, and it started to just get, like, carried away, man, kind of like what I was reading, the jokes were just funny. It
Aaron Brien:just, I just realized, you're doing this because Casey's a comedian.
Shandin Pete:Is he a comedian? He hasn't made us laugh yet.
Aaron Brien:No, I just realized this. You
Shandin Pete:just realized it? Just now? Yeah, so Casey, just now, because in my mind,
Aaron Brien:I still, I've known Casey a while, so I know him, I still see him as like a counselor Well, psychologist, right? Kind of, what are you? What were dudsley, yeah, good. Counselor, yeah. Counselor, we were talking, I kind of see him as the counselor and
Salisha Old Bull:a grass dancer, indigenous mental health team, yeah?
Aaron Brien:I mean, I know him. I know obviously, I know him as a comedian, but like mine, yeah, you know how you first question still, kind of, I just realized that's cliche.
Shandin Pete:Well, I mean, all of us, well, all of us held jokes. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
Aaron Brien:wait, make me laugh. Casey.
Shandin Pete:Step back, step back. No. I mean, all of us here can agree that we don't think Casey's that funny.
Kasey Nicholson:Clear that out there.
Shandin Pete:Yeah, clear it all out because Casey can't be funny, just in the in how we're doing it right now. He can be. He just can't be. We have to start talking about, like, like, what? What is that? What was that? One thing that we did that time places that are not good to smudge. Remember that, oh my god, places that you ought not to smudge. And then, then we all kind of laugh around and say something dead chime in, but, but it's if you try to set it up, it just don't work. Like, okay, Casey, in this next segment, we're going to talk about smudging and places where it's inappropriate go.
Aaron Brien:I think, I think, I think, Okay, if you because Casey's been doing stand up for a 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 also think we can't do what he does. No, we can't No. In order to be, I think in order to be a decent, just a decent, stand up, yeah, you have to bomb a lot. Oh, yeah. And I don't know if I could do that. That's self. Esteem has to be, I don't, I don't think, I think a lot of qkc, and they're like, I got a joke for you
Shandin Pete:that's trying to do that.
Kasey Nicholson:Well, I think that's the thing is, is the vulnerability of of it. You know what? 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 out their stories or their jokes. Yeah. But to the vulnerability of it. I think it just, it's something that is scary for some people, but, but the thing I don't get is there's some freaking hilarious people. All, all, all three of y'all are hilarious. And I like, man, you should tell that stage, you know what I mean. And it's just like, Oh no, you know. Like, but it's funny. Like, that would totally get a laugh. But when people go on stage, they reformat it because of their uncomfortableness, the crowd looking at them, the judging, yeah, um, that kind of stuff. I think just the vulnerability and, yeah, self esteem. Sure, you guys all got pretty good, high self esteem. So I wouldn't really equate it to that. I think the vulnerability of it is just, you're up there by yourself. You don't have, like, I say all the time. You don't have that band, you don't have a drum, you don't have a guitar to bail you out. Like, when you bomb, you bomb, it's all in,
Shandin Pete:yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Brien:Cuz it's a pretty honest engagement. You say something funny and people laugh. If people don't laugh, it's not funny to them.
Kasey Nicholson:And you're telling, and, yeah, you're telling jokes in front of people you don't even know. They don't even seen you before, don't even know your style. Yeah, your your setup, your punchline, they don't know nothing about you. Like, and that's, that's the crazy thing. And yeah, you go up there and tell the one liner jokes, and, you know, like, you know, the, yeah, the casino jokes and all that. But you could tell those jokes honestly, but you could tell us one line of jokes. But I think it really comes down to, like, the delivery of it, you know, not. I mean, Sean Dean was kind of monotone just saying it. But, I mean, I'm sure if you set it up in a different way, it, yeah, probably fun new year. Maybe, I
Aaron Brien: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 in the sense that making fun of the joke, yeah, it can be funny.
Kasey Nicholson:The thing that was funny about it was him laughing at the joke,
Aaron Brien:knowing, knowing it was a bad joke, I think was, yeah, funny, but I think the difference between a stand up and native humor, because a lot of native people are funny, but they're not stand ups, and they couldn't be. The difference is because a lot of our humor is predicated on the audience knowing our environment even references to people like you, you're talking about somebody that everybody knows, or, like, why that person said every res has those people that everybody knows and that that's like, you don't have to, like, set all that up.
Shandin Pete:Yeah, that's kind of like the Oh, go ahead, keep going.
Aaron Brien:No, that would be tough. Yeah, that'd be hard to do. So that's kind of like, just because you're funny, you can be a stand up.
Shandin Pete:Yeah? That's like the genesis of the anti, the native anti. I think that's where that kind of come from, this sort of archetype of what I'm like. So over
Aaron Brien:that stuff, that's, I've always thought that was weird. Yes, it is
Shandin Pete:the auntie stuff, auntie and uncle, yeah,
Salisha Old Bull:so weird, yeah. I mean,
Shandin Pete:in a certain way, it's funny, but again, it's situational, right? Like, like everything, yeah. So
Aaron Brien:Casey, I have a question for you, how long do you think? And because you're going on almost 20 years now, right? 15 years, 16 years?
Kasey Nicholson:Yeah, I see 2000 so comedy, 2010 so, yeah, almost 15 years. Full time.
Aaron Brien:Yeah, yeah. So full time, divide and solve for x, no How did it take? You really felt like you started finding your own thing? Because I think every comedian probably goes through stages, right? Like, yeah, you hit the low hanging fruit stuff at the beginning. Yeah, go on fast native jokes.
Kasey Nicholson:2000 I would say 2017 is when I think I started, because I started doing comedy, not only in front of natives. I started doing comedy actually in front of, you know, a diverse crowd. And when I was making them laugh, and when I was, you know, getting into different comedy competitions, that's when I felt like I was catching a groove, like, Okay, this is mine. This is, this is. Is no one else I feel had a same comedy routine that I did.
Aaron Brien:So it took. It took roughly seven years. Yeah, oh yeah. And from the stuff I've seen with comedians, I'm not a comedian, but, oh, sorry, seven, five, it seems about like 567, years before people start figuring it out. Oh,
Kasey Nicholson:yeah. Some people say it's about five years. Um, mine was, I would say mine was little. And I'm not saying that it was prolonged, because I wasn't doing comedy all the time since 2010 like I'd have one or two, three gigs from 1112, 13, and then when I hit full time 2014 that's when my gig started. Really going a little bit higher, because I was hustling, I was working for him, I was going up with mikes, doing all those other things. But those first two or three years, I was probably getting, I don't know, like, 10 minutes, about four or five times a year, you know, and so, and most of it was just silence. And then there'd be the like, a couple banger jokes that would like, you know, like, have people rolling. I'm like, Okay, there's something there, you know, but, but it wasn't like a comedy. It wasn't like a comedy place in LA, Chicago, Seattle, you know, where they get wrapped four or five times a night, every other night, or every night, you know? But, yeah, so I didn't catch my so
Aaron Brien:how many minutes you have now? Do you have an hour? Yeah, I probably
Kasey Nicholson:go about hour and 15
Aaron Brien:So, and you're pretty you you feel like that out you're pretty comfortable with that hour. Oh,
Kasey Nicholson:yeah, yeah. Oh, nice. Either, either I'm either I'm gonna be telling jokes from the ones that are written down, or I might be just playing, you know, play, playing with the crowd a bit, then go and then transitioning into a joke, you know, like, Oh, that reminds me of this joke. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, yeah,
Aaron Brien:what? My daughter came in to the living room yesterday and said, she said, Dad, I'm going to be a stand up comedian. And then I said, she said, you want to hear my routine? She said, I have one joke. Yeah, she's 12, right? It's already funny. She goes, I'm half white. And then she leans in and goes, ask me what the other half is. What's the other half? And she goes, also white. It's funny, because she's not white at all. I That's her first joke in her stand up comedy career.
Salisha Old Bull:Nice,
Kasey Nicholson: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,
Shandin Pete:that's funny. Yeah, I
Aaron Brien:don't know why it was funny. Part of the joke too is like, she tells you what to say. She Oh, yeah. Ask me what the other half is, yeah, that's funny.
Kasey Nicholson:That's a good routine. She could do a whole set on that
Aaron Brien:she's onto something. Yeah,
Shandin Pete:pretty good. So, oh, good. Oh yeah. No, no, you go,
Kasey Nicholson:no, no no,
Aaron Brien:your time. Casey,
Kasey Nicholson:no. But I think, I think when, when we were, I was going to say something earlier about comedy and how the it's, it's, I think really comes down to the psychological part of it. Like, you can, you can make anybody laugh with, like, let's say within our own circle, our cousins, our our, you know, uncles, or whatever. You make them laugh because we already have a psychological connection. But when you go in front of a crowd that you don't know, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta make that psychological connection. Like, what, what's going 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, or whatever that that now, now you got me bought in psychologically. You're making my mind turn. You're not giving me the answer. You're actually making me think. So the one liners like Sean Dean was saying earlier. It's not making you think. It just kind of like, oh, okay, whatever, you know. But if he added like, little twists and turns or misdirection or something that we totally wouldn't even expect then, yeah, yeah. That makes it fun, yeah. But I think that's one of the biggest things with comedy, is the psychological connection. Like you, you have to learn you're literally a mind you're, you're, you're a magician your mind, you're, you're a mind game player, kind of like you're you gotta play the mind games with the crowd. It's. Crazy. It's Yeah, it's weird. Yeah,
Aaron Brien:you're a mind game here guy. Yeah, I am
Shandin Pete:mind gamer. Guys, Indian guys are good at playing mind games. They're really good at it. You know, that's another episode. I like they'll ask their old lady, why you so mad? But really, they're the one that's
Aaron Brien:mad. Why are you so mad? Man, I use I use that all the time. That's mine. Gamer, are
Kasey Nicholson:you mad? Why
Shandin Pete:are you so mad at me? You're
Aaron Brien:the one really mad. Well, nobody wants to lose an argument. So I don't know why. I don't know why this is, this is now become acceptable. I'm going to win. You're right, you're right,
Shandin Pete:you're right. Okay,
Kasey Nicholson:that's another one. You're right. You're so perfect, yeah,
Shandin Pete:ultra passive aggressive. We do it. We can't help it either. We're so dumb every time, every time, every time, we just can't help it. Okay, this is what I want. Now you care.
Aaron Brien:Oh, oh, so now you care.
Shandin Pete:So dumb, so dumb, so dumb. I'm so dumb. What?
Aaron Brien:What? Got a question for
Shandin Pete:Casey? Oh, let's shoot man. Do it. It
Aaron Brien:was a simple question, so in your early
Shandin Pete:question, but it just tell me, Oh,
Aaron Brien:I said it's a simple question. Oh,
Shandin Pete:okay, okay, calm down. Remember, men have high self esteem. Casey said it. High self esteems here. Okay, just roll with him. Man, you don't have to prove Are you mad? You don't have to prove it. Don't think. Why you mad? You don't have to prove to me that you think your question's stupid. Yes.
Aaron Brien:Okay, go. You were a counselor before. What did you feel like? It was a fairly easy transition to go from a counselor to a comedian.
Shandin Pete:You're on mute, bro,
Kasey Nicholson:yes, actually it was No, you're good.
Shandin Pete:Every time, every time I'm gonna get a fake news that
Aaron Brien:he's doing a video. What
Shandin Pete:do you call me? Don't call me that. Call me fake. Remember, we have high self
Kasey Nicholson:esteem. That's a fake. Mute. Um,
Shandin Pete:okay, question
Kasey Nicholson:wise, yeah, it was, I think it was easy because of, again, because of the psychological part of it, because again, you're trying to make connection with that person across from you while you're counseling. You're trying to get to know them, where they come from, break down the barriers, the walls, to allow them to be themselves. And so I guess with the crowd, you'd want to break down those walls, you know, psychologically, say, hey, I want you to be yourself, and I want you to laugh, because I'm funny. I don't know, something like that. That's what I would say, yeah. So it was a relatively easy, I don't know if it was, you know what? Honestly, yeah, it was, I don't know. I think it was, but I think, I think I've always, I've always wanted to be it. So I was already prepping myself through watching tons of, obviously stand up shows and obviously gathering some material from different scenarios in my profession, you know, so with no names, of course, yeah. I mean, there's just some funny, some funny situations and scenarios that you can, you know, roll off of, like, dang. I never thought about it that way, you know. And you kind of like, Oh, okay. But then put it in that, but then the the thought tank, and hopefully that you can use that someday.
Aaron Brien:So do you think, though, just what you said, Do you think that like native especially, seems like practitioners of native people, we like bank and we have ammunition when you go, when you go around, like traditional people like ammunition, and they can't wait to, like, Tell Somebody like, hey, guess what? This guy did, you know? What did they say? You know what I mean, like, and they'll kind of knock you out and like and everyone laughs at your expense for a little bit, then you might do that. It seems like a natural process for a lot of native people to bank, I guess what you would call jokes. But really this, it's like ammunition. You. Against people. So did you feel like that was pretty natural for you anyway, to like because the way I imagine it, like any skill you research your premise, and that's the way I think people think of it. But I feel like native comedians, because of their upbringing, there are, they've learned to bank ambition like that, funny stories, and even like the teasing part of 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 we did, we did like, so he's like, probably at the profession of stand up, probably the most, like, well thought out, like he thinks out, you know, those high level guys. But did you feel like when you started banking, obviously, when you started banking information that started way before the stand up comedy,
Kasey Nicholson:yep. Um, and I think a lot of the banking part was actually being, I can relate to a lot of the stuff that it was banking, so as whether it be, you know, the funny stories around camp or around a drum group or in the profession I was in, like, I think a lot of that, honestly, was being able to relate to those things and saying, How Can I use that information that I'm banking and twisted or formatted, or make it seem like I'm going down this route, and do a little twist to to make it funny, because I think that the the median art form had to been learned. Like that had to and like the punch line, you know, the setup, you know, the set up, the punch line, all that stuff that had to be learned. I already had the information. I already had the the the relating part of my the people that I was around with. So I can, like, I can make people laugh if I could just relate to them. But now, how do I set it up to not draw out this long story and lose them, but enough to where I'm like, Okay, if I say this and I twist it like this, and I'm going to say something I never expected, but still were. They're able to relate to it, you know. So, like, one of my first jokes was the spanking joke, you know. And how I related to the crowd was right away, you know. And we we talked about at the beginning of this, we talked about the trauma and all that stuff. But I was like, how many all got spanked? And again, this joke came out of freaking left field. I have none. I didn't have anything written down. My first time ever going up on stage, didn't have nothing. And I was like, you know, fumbling, and then all sudden, I said, Man, I got spanked. I got spanked hard. When I was a kid. How many guys used to get spanked? And people like, oh, you know, like they clapped or whatever, and raise their hand. And then, as I'm telling the story, the jokes already being written before it gets to my mouth, right? Mm, so there it is. Here it comes. Okay? I used to get, I used to get whipped by my mom's thong. That's what my mom would call the 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 was like, I looked at this one woman, she reacted. I'm like, Yes, I got her. And again, I'm already the joke's already formulating there. And again, I'm just telling the joke off top of my head. Never wrote down. I'm just telling it off top my head. And I seen her react, and I said, Oh, no, not that kind of thong. It's not that where, you know, you pull it out of your ash crack and pull it back like you're gonna try, you know, that's why the joke, naturally, was just formulating for me, because now I got them relating to me. I have a psychological connection with them. I'm talking about my trauma. So I could be really, I can be really connected. I guess I could be really, oh, I could be invested in this joke, you know, yeah, so I'm playing it out my and again. And a lot of people don't understand that the the the verbiage and the words and the fluctuation of the voice and like, it's gotta be all going rhythmically, connected together, so that, yeah, when I come out very end. They're laughing. They're I got them rolling because if I stutter, or if I go um or a or, you know, or whatever kind of repetitive thing, I'm going to lose them, you know what I mean. So it has to be this fluid story where I'm still connecting with them. I'm psychologically, got them bought in. Yeah, I shorten the experience to where I never thought about it that way, you know, that kind of thing, yeah. And so that joke kind of like just kind of almost unfolded, how my start, how my style kind of came to be. And it was from that, was from, honestly, just being able to relate to the crowd, relate to the people that I was telling jokes to, yeah, again, and honestly, that my second time ever doing comedy was a bomb like a bombed like hard. I wrote all my jokes down verbatim, because that's write your jokes down. No. Of them, you know, word for word. Get it down. 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 just like, okay, that's my time. And I walked off, and I don't, I'm pretty sure I didn't get, I got the sympathy claps. I didn't get, no, I pretty sure I got maybe a couple uncomfortable giggles, but they weren't real loud. But I remember. But I remember walking away from that and saying, I don't ever want to feel that again. I remember that I'm like, I don't remember. So I just went back to my first time, and then I just started to kind of working on that. So my, my, my, my failure in that comedy stance was actually my, my rise. I guess you'd call it, because I didn't ever want to feel that again. It was a horrible I mean, my aunties weren't laughing. People were kind of like it was really bad. And then, because I was being too too structured, you know? It wasn't flowy. It was just yeah, you know, and it should have been, I that.
Aaron Brien:You know, first time I seen you do comedy was in Missoula, like, long time ago. Is that a
Salisha Old Bull:sign red corn? I seen you once do that, man, I
Aaron Brien:don't know. It was like long time ago. It had to have been 20 while you
Kasey Nicholson:Yeah, it was 2010 or 11, yeah, yeah, it was early,
Shandin Pete:long ago, long ago, long ago. It's funny.
Aaron Brien: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 do this deal. So, yeah,
Kasey Nicholson:yeah, thank you for that. You know, Ernie,
Shandin Pete:you know, instructing is sort of, it's the same. It seems very similar. The way you describe it, you know, providing instruction for students is, like, I employ a lot of humor, but I don't, I never think of the things that I'm going to say. It's always just on the fly, you know, like you, like you're always judging your audience. That's how I feel when I'm instructing is I'm always judging the students, see where they're at, and trying to relate what I'm teaching them to, sort of, how I, how I how receptive they are to like, sort of, sort of my life. So I bring little pieces of my life in that that seem to be funny, and you know, that that really helps, that I think that's, that's the thing you described, is very familiar. And I think that works not only in humor, but in instruction, in in anything that anyone does in front of a crowd. You know, you gotta know the crowd. It's like, I kind of reminds me of, like bouncing a basketball. You know, when you once you get it dribbling, you kind of know the thing that's going to keep it moving. You know, there's like, these, like these little cues that you can just say, you got them, you already got them laughing, and it just takes us very little to prod them along, to get them to go more. And if those things were said out of context, they would not be funny, but because you already got the ball bouncing, they just keep going.
Aaron Brien:Yeah, it does seem like comedy relies heavily on rhythm and like momentum. Like you build momentum with you. The difference, though, between instruction and stand up, I think, is there's no expectation to be funny and instruction, yeah,
Shandin Pete:yeah, you shouldn't be but you can fall
Aaron Brien:back. There's always this fall back thing. It's extra. It is,
Kasey Nicholson:I think, I think the the thing about the expectation to be funny is why a lot of people don't dive into comedy or stand up, and some people just don't want it. But, I mean, there's some people that are really funny that could be, for example, there's these certain there's a comedy workshop I did once where, you know, laughter is healing, kind of workshop thing where I said, Alright, hey guys, you know, this is my intro, this is my motivation. But I said, Hey, I was just, you know, I told a funny story. And I said, Does anybody else got, like, a funny story that they want to share too, like, man. The thing that happened to me this morning was I couldn't believe it. It was funny. We had people rolling. Has anybody else can, you know, have a funny story like that? Sure, like, two or three people went up, had us rolling, just like, ah. After that was over, I was like, you know, I kind of went on a little bit more about my comedy career. And then I was like, man, so you know, I'm going to give it people opportunity, you know, to stand up 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 us rolling. And I said, believe it or not, those three people that were telling us the story. You. You, you guys were literally doing comedy. Like, that's what it is. Like, you were, you're taking us through a scenario. You hit us with a setup, a punch line, 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 we you asked us the anxiety or or the vulnerability of getting up and actually telling jokes. And these people actually stood up. They stood up from their their desk or their their chairs, yeah, and told these funny stories and had us rolling, yeah? But I mean, again, I mean, I think it really comes down to that, that connection, not realizing like that, expect, expect, expecting to be funny? Yeah,
Shandin Pete: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 had this thing. I had this thing where I thought I taught the same class two different sections. One was just across the board, students, you know, anybody across across campus. Then I taught a very special section for Native students. And in that class, you know, I could, I could rely on so much relatable things, you know, and when you're talking about that just now, it got to me. It got me thinking about something that I could say in one class, but I couldn't say in the other one, and in the in the native class, I could talk about nits. I could talk about nits in lice, in, you know, the shampoo, it's the shampoo called the mix? I don't know if that go off the same in front of the other class. So I was thinking like, what is there other Is there things that you notice in your in your line of work? Like, if the crowd is mostly and I don't know if you get crowds that are primarily non native or not, and is there things that you know that it's not going to connect to them, like you can't talk about nits, or you can't talk about your diet, your uncle's diabetes, toe that got cut off, that like people would be shocked, like, Oh my God, why is he talking about that? But the the native crowd, it'd be real funny. Is there something that you notice there that, like there's a line that you have to draw that's different from the primarily native to the non native crowd. I don't know if you had those situations, but let me know. No,
Kasey Nicholson:um, I don't, I know. Um, I've, I think I'd see it as a challenge to bring up our native humor with non natives, to see if our humor can be funny to them, and they are. It is. I mean, I've won comedy competitions based off of our humor. You know what I mean in front of you get it all, and the reason they get it is because how you set it up, you know, like, yeah, okay, knits right away. All the natives allow, but you gonna, you have to say, you have to set up and kind of
Shandin Pete:say it, I know, right?
Kasey Nicholson:You have to, kind of like, set it up and twist it as a you know? You just have to set it up a different way. But you don't have to draw the line, you know what? I mean, yeah, yeah.
Shandin Pete: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 knit Comb. Comb, comb my hair with the knit comb. And I noticed that, oh, wow, this knit comb really makes my hair smooth, you know, like it, like aligns all the hair. I
Aaron Brien:really like that Nick's all my danger. Found good exfoliator, comb to school, and just told on yourself
Shandin Pete:you want to use it. I use
Salisha Old Bull:it one
Aaron Brien:time I was on another reservation. I won't say where we're at a power and these two kids, these, I see these two groups of kids running towards each other, like, excited, right? Yeah. And they get close to each other, and they meet up, and they're like, little razors, you know? And the one kid says to the others, gets us. My mom said, I can go play with you guys, but you can't give me bugs. And then the kid says, Okay. And then they take off. The whole group takes off.
Kasey Nicholson:Okay, okay, deal,
Salisha Old Bull:poor kids. I was
Aaron Brien:like, Oh man,
Shandin Pete:okay. I want to, I want to tell you.
Aaron Brien:I want to know Casey, what. But not, I'm not talking about non native people, but What? What? What? Give us an example of what premise or joke works around here, like the plains and Rockies, but won't work like, say, with like tribes in California or something like, what's you ever run into that where, like, something's working, and then you go outside of that region, then it's, man, this doesn't seem to like fit, but I want to
Kasey Nicholson:know about native from native to natives.
Aaron Brien:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but just Oh, because there's this assumption that we're all the same, but there were no yeah,
Kasey Nicholson:oh, that's, it's like,
Shandin Pete: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, you know, in the States, and then Bannock is the term in Canada. So, but, I mean, people still get it when you say fry bread or Bannock, like, that's, is that kind of what you're talking about? Aaron, I
Aaron Brien:mean, I guess, but, yeah, but not that dumb. That's why I said premise like,
Shandin Pete:well, we don't know. I don't think. I mean,
Kasey Nicholson:like the jokes that I've, I've done and form like, I guess, formed or wrote are pretty if I feel like I'm losing them, I'll bring in something to hook them back in. You know what I mean? Yeah. So let's say I'm just trying to think of one that kind of we're out of push to kind of get them in, bought in. Yeah. We'll probably be one of the first jokes, I guess I would do was, was, was the sometimes I would war cry, and so, like we were crying in Montana. And people get that, you know, that kind of thing, 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, like, oh, and the way we sing is really, you know, high or roller voice. And so it's totally different. So I was telling a joke, but again, this joke, you know, on the fly as I'm telling it, I felt like I was losing them. I went right to like, you know, white women, like, this kind but, you know, I mean something like that. You know, white women like, like a screaming in Montana. I don't know how you women like here, you know, you like your man in bed, going, Oh,
Aaron Brien:that's funny. Yeah.
Kasey Nicholson:So I thought I was losing them, and then I kind of diverted into, like, more of a the women kind of like, the women like it here. How does the women like it here? You know that? I So, but I saved myself by doing that because I was losing off my work cries, like they weren't really into the work cries or the singing, like singing high Yeah, but yeah, so that'd be Yeah.
Shandin Pete:That answers my question. That's good example, yeah.
Kasey Nicholson:But again, like some comedians will they, they have their jokes written, and they'll, they'll stay on, on their they'll stay on that, that line. They'll be like, Okay, this all I'm gonna say. This is how I'm gonna do it now. Okay, next show. And some of them will, like, lose a crowd, but they'll just keep going through their jokes,
Shandin Pete:like a record, yeah,
Kasey Nicholson: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's there. And so for me, I feel like I've learned through the years, like, okay, if I'm losing a crowd, how can I get them bought back in? You know? Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, fortunately enough, I think I've, you know, been able to do that. Yeah, you know, some, some, honestly, some banquet shows are tough because they're not there to laugh. They're there for the free food. They're there for the door prize. Yeah? So they could be tough.
Shandin Pete:Some of us are there to scoff at what's going on. Oh,
Aaron Brien:yeah. Oh, you're not funny. Yeah. This guy's a comedian.
Shandin Pete:I need, I need help with this joke. Okay, somebody Imma tell you the next part. Yeah, the medicine man, the shaman and the healer. Remember, they argued, I really need help with this. Okay, because I can't get the last part. Okay? So they remember, they all headed out into the woods. They're going to find a mountain lion for helper. That's not going to prove who's the best. So that well, then a few weeks later, they all met back up at the bar, you know, and so the medicine man comes in. He says, Hey, I found a mountain lion down by the river, and I went up to him, and I gave him my newly released book on the Severn sacred teaching. Amazon. And now he comes to my house every night in and sweats with me in my co Ed sweat. So then the shaman says, Oh yeah, well, I saw a mountain lion up there in a clear cut. And I gave him one of my prayer kits that I sell on Amazon, you know, and he loved it so much. Now he comes to my drum circle we have down at the City Park. So the shaman and the medicine man turned to the healer. I don't know what, what could you say?
Salisha Old Bull:It's make
Shandin Pete:this. I just made this up. I'm trying to think of something funny that they I think
Aaron Brien:what's funny is how you changed your voice for the medicine man.
Shandin Pete:Oh, yeah, well, the medicine man, you know, because they
Aaron Brien:clearly was not your natural voice. I me,
Shandin Pete:that's my medicine man. Voice, Whoa,
Aaron Brien:he's vested. He's invested in this, in this joke.
Shandin Pete: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 to make a joke? It's really hard to do. Man, it's hard to do. And that's a testament right there, because I thought, well, yeah, these are funny things. Uh huh, yeah, co Ed sweat gave him my books, and now I'm sweating with a bunch of women in the mountain lion. That's kind of funny, I guess. I don't know, but it's not quite the punch line, right the other guy, my pair of kids on Amazon, we're at the drum circle down at the park that I can't the punch line. That's the hardest part. I know. I can't think of it anyway. That was a testament to sort of the work that you do. Because, like you said, it's really situational, right? Because, because you could probably draw inspiration from the crowd on what would be next, right? Even though you didn't have the joke locked in, you're just kind of going with it, and you're feeding off the crowd. You see, what's that? Just like the joke you said about the about what white women like, you know, moving on, on the region. That's, you know, that's just classic, funny stuff that Indians do all the time when we get together, right, right? Yeah, we just, we just go off on things, and it's just, we just laugh, yeah, and I think
Aaron Brien:you should change the joke. You should change the joke. I don't think it should be a shaman, a medicine man or here, I think it should be some bipolar, someone with ADD and someone with diabetes. And the challenge is the same, though?
Shandin Pete:Yeah, that'd be funny, right? Okay, so ADHD, what was the other one? What did you say, diabetic and a bipolar person walk into a bar, um, would they even argue though, what, like, what was like? Were they the
Aaron Brien:diabetics? Tickers down. They're arguing.
Shandin Pete:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. So they argue, and then they Well, what do they do? Then, what is the argument about? Like, who's better at having the
Kasey Nicholson:who has the worst diagnosis?
Shandin Pete:Who has the worst diagnosis, diagnosis? So then
Aaron Brien:what? There's one more caveat, all in denial of these things,
Shandin Pete:whatever I want, what's bipolar? You know, 10 means, I don't know these hard to do. It's really hard to do. This is what you
Aaron Brien: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 freestyle with Nicole. And I'm like, This is crazy.
Shandin Pete:Yeah, I was, I was trying to get to that, you know, but, but
Kasey Nicholson:I think the joke, honestly, I I think the joke would be more easier to write if you could relate to that, to to relate to it. You know what? I mean? Yeah, yeah. What do you struggle with? What are you? Are you diagnosed with? Anything, you know, all those kind of things, like, something that you can relate to, because then the joke form forms itself, because now you're able to relate to going to get a mountain line, like, what the you know, like, Wouldn't it be funny if
Aaron Brien:it was the same person. This joke was being told as if it's three people, and then the punchline is that it's the same person, bipolar, diabetic, and add
Shandin Pete:full personality in there. I.
Aaron Brien:Yeah, I'm not far from that.
Shandin Pete:No, he gotta get all three of those. Well, you're working on the diabetes, right? What are you eating? Man, I'm
Aaron Brien:still eating those ribs. Or what are these called? Burnt burnt ends.
Shandin Pete:That's the sodium of sodiums right there. That's just a chunk of sodium. Man, you're just a chunk of
Kasey Nicholson:sodium. Don't be so salty.
Aaron Brien:And there we go.
Shandin Pete:There it is. Should I go back to the one liners? Yeah,
Kasey Nicholson:yeah. Honestly, that's the thing is, like with comedy, you have to find your niche. Like, where are you a one liner? Are you a storyteller? Are you, you know, like, you just gotta, you just gotta keep writing and find out eventually, you know, like singing, like some people are better at Southern than you know, contemporary, like,
Shandin Pete:Oh no, yeah,
Kasey Nicholson:agreed with the artist, look, look at silicia. I mean, maybe she's works better watercolor than acrylic or oil. I don't know. She's been painting this whole time.
Aaron Brien: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 a frown. She, like she gives that confused.
Kasey Nicholson:Is mostly to Sean Dean, too. I'm trying
Shandin Pete:to hold this together. You
Salisha Old Bull:were gonna ask, I thought you were gonna ask something else, but I What was you gonna ask something different? Or was it all about this joke?
Shandin Pete:No, I mean, that was just like, like, what do they call it? Self defecating. I was just self defecating on myself. I
Aaron Brien:Oh, that'll smell funny in here. Deprecate means something.
Kasey Nicholson:See, this is your joke, right there. Oh,
Shandin Pete:yeah. I was trying to have myself be the target of ridicule. That was
Aaron Brien:it was a clever ruse, though,
Shandin Pete:because I'm not a joke. Writer, I don't write jokes. That's pretty
Aaron Brien:evident.
Shandin Pete:Yeah.
Salisha Old Bull:Writer,
Aaron Brien:oh, I'm just kidding. It was a good idea. I think it's a good idea. Now
Shandin Pete:he's trying to build me back up. No, you're okay. That's Indian humor.
Aaron Brien:Indian humor. Yeah, gonna knock you down, bro.
Kasey Nicholson:Why are you mad? Why are you mad?
Shandin Pete:Let anybody tell you can't achieve your dreams? Okay, I'm going to write a joke that 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 to do it right now. Okay, we do it right now. Okay, here we go. So
Salisha Old Bull:wait, we gotta know anything to write a joke. Yeah, yeah.
Shandin Pete:So we gotta, what's gotta be cutting edge so new. We can't, we can't rely on the 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 something new and funny. Well, no, because we already use them up. Man, what we joke about them all the time. Nothing's new. Nothing's new and funny. There's God, man, we
Aaron Brien:joke about everything on this talk. In fact, this is when we have a comedian on our podcast, and this is the least funny I
Shandin Pete:know. And I know we
Aaron Brien:can do the prime example of what Casey was saying, it's force. We're forcing it. We're
Shandin Pete:forcing ruining it. We're ruining okay, we're ruining it. No, we're not going to ruin it.
Salisha Old Bull:We're gonna. We're not ruining it.
Kasey Nicholson:You're just bombing. We're
Shandin Pete:just bombing. Okay, here's something new and something funny. It like, like contemporary, native, things that's new and that we can make fun of.
Salisha Old Bull:That's hard, ain't it? Well, nothing's new. Oh
Aaron Brien:man, wait, make fun of, yeah,
Shandin Pete:yeah, something new, though, something that we haven't made fun of yet.
Salisha Old Bull:Oh, Lord, what? You're
Shandin Pete:not on mute. Say, Alicia, you're not on mute.
Salisha Old Bull:Oh, what did not get made fun of yet? Um,
Shandin Pete: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 always make fun of conferences, native conferences. Conferences, pretty common. One, pretty common one. Those are like squarely in well, because we're well,
Salisha Old Bull:we could have everybody introduce themselves.
Shandin Pete: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.
Kasey Nicholson:Something that's going on, fashion design. We've
Shandin Pete: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 native fashion shows, he goes off, what
Kasey Nicholson:about cowboys? What? What native dressing like cowboys? Native
Shandin Pete:dressing is cowboy. I think we talked about that, right? I think we hit that a little. What
Salisha Old Bull:did you say an inch? It's like,
Aaron Brien:I want to make one thing that drives me crazy is when people change a letter in a word and they think it somehow redefines the word,
Kasey Nicholson:like, delicious,
Shandin Pete:yeah, Like, resolution,
Aaron Brien:like, that's Casey's thing.
Shandin Pete:Yeah, yeah. Says rematriate,
Kasey Nicholson:trademarked
Aaron Brien:like rematriate. I still don't quite understand.
Salisha Old Bull:Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Shandin Pete:What about it?
Aaron Brien:Yeah, what the hell is it mean? Why is it different than repatriate?
Salisha Old Bull:What is patriot? Oh, to bring back. Oh, wait, what? And why is it? Why is it? What
Shandin Pete:rematriate is? It's like, it's like an indigenous women led work to restore sacred relationships between indigenous people and the land. That's it what? Yeah. I mean, is it that? I mean, I just Googled, oh,
Salisha Old Bull:it's about Mother Earth. Oh, that's what Google says. Yeah. Rematrite
Shandin Pete:is a concept used by indigenous women to describe the practice of restoring relationship between indigenous people and their ancestral lands,
Salisha Old Bull:so it has no relevance to repatriate. So does that mean the same as repatriate?
Shandin Pete:I don't know. What's repatriate,
Salisha Old Bull:something to do at museums, right? Yeah,
Shandin Pete:like
Aaron Brien:the Repatriation Act, but I mean, is that how they're using the word?
Shandin Pete:I don't think so. Repatriate is
Salisha Old Bull:to the land, to the land, returning
Shandin Pete:of a thing or person to its country of origin. Do we have an issue with this? Yeah, do we? Do we want to? Do you want to do this with repatriate?
Aaron Brien:I mean, I don't even really know what it means, to be honest, but I hear it all the time, and I I'm like, because I use the we have to use the word repatriation for work all the time. So when I hear people say, rematriate, is that just the reassigning of that word or, like, I don't get it. I don't understand it, because the way they're using it, yeah, it. I don't. It's never been clearly defined, so I don't even know if it's the same or if it is the same. And they're just like, I don't know. I don't know what they're what they're doing. Maybe I don't know even know enough about it to make fun of it.
Shandin Pete:Yeah, I think you don't. Maybe
Salisha Old Bull:we should wait to make fun of it. Wait,
Aaron Brien:yeah, I'm gonna learn about it, and then I'm going to make fun of it. Let's do that. I don't know more.
Shandin Pete:That's, that's old man. I
Salisha Old Bull:don't remember this. I don't know where this. That's old yet.
Shandin Pete:That's, oh,
Aaron Brien:I just kind of died like it just died. What died? That movement, that whole, oh, I know. Remember, it was like, hot, and then boom, it like, and it's like summer came and everyone had something to do. Yeah?
Kasey Nicholson:Tired of idling, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. Needed to move on. I don't know more they they literally were doing what they wanted to do, and moved on from that.
Aaron Brien:It just died. Do you? Do you remember it on my way in left field?
Kasey Nicholson:Yeah, I was there. I was like this in front of the sign.
Shandin Pete:I was there in the mall singing that round dance song. I.
Aaron Brien:A flash mob. I
Shandin Pete:flash mobbed at least twice. I was there
Aaron Brien:at least twice. Against
Salisha Old Bull:me, flash mobs. I liked
Shandin Pete:how people thought they had to sneak their hand drum into the mall so nobody would see it. You know, just all sudden busted out. You know, I was like, there's
Aaron Brien:200 Indian people walking into the mall with hand drums under their shirts, nothing to see here,
Salisha Old Bull:and just a regular old Indian. I'm
Shandin Pete:just here to get some Cinnabon. I'm not here to sing by the fountain.
Kasey Nicholson:Don't take your hand. Jumped Victoria,
Salisha Old Bull:please. Me About to pray something weird.
Aaron Brien:Nothing to see here, guys.
Shandin Pete:Okay, that's clearly been, yeah, I don't know that's tough one. There's a lot of, well, the one I was talking about the other day that's sort of new, this idea of extinction and how I don't want to talk about that. We don't want to do that again. We don't do okay. So I'm counting on silicia and Aaron to think of something, and Casey to think, I don't think, what, what? Yeah, that's a lot of pressure, man. Well, you should have done this at the
Aaron Brien:beginning. We're going on an hour.
Salisha Old Bull:Well, we just need to do a list of things.
Shandin Pete:Okay, list of things. List of things.
Aaron Brien:What's off limits? Let's say that.
Shandin Pete:Oh, yeah, awful. That's a good one. Was there
Salisha Old Bull:stuff that was off limits
Aaron Brien:for me? There's very little that's off limits. Yeah, that's for Sean Bean and the University of BC, there's a lot, there's some
Shandin Pete:limits. Yeah, how about, um, you could be raised out if, oh, yeah, man, maybe, I don't know. What do you think that's old, right? That's just relying on some classic. I like the one that we did, but we couldn't get Aaron to engage because he was this. No, his blood sugar was off. Remember places not to smudge? And he just was wondering, what is going on with you two? And we're going off on places that you shouldn't smudge. Oh, yeah, yeah, I don't,
Aaron Brien:I don't remember this conversation at all inappropriate
Kasey Nicholson:replaces the smudge. Yeah, on the
Aaron Brien:was it on the podcast?
Shandin Pete:Yeah, we did a whole bit on it, and I think your blood, oh, you're in a coma or something.
Aaron Brien:I wasn't on it. Have you been on the podcast before? Casey wasn't on.
Shandin Pete:Casey wasn't on. It was first I can't remember first time. First time. Was it the first time? Yeah.
Kasey Nicholson:Man, for some
Aaron Brien:reason I thought you were on before
Kasey Nicholson:we talked about it, yeah. But 60 episodes later, I'm on, yeah.
Shandin Pete:How about, um, places you should not, places you shouldn't Fast, fast places you shouldn't try to find, get a vision, I don't know. Oh, okay, okay, okay,
Aaron Brien:at the bar,
Shandin Pete:at a four way stop, people are gonna honk at you. Yeah? This is, yeah, that wouldn't work.
Aaron Brien:That's so hard. You remember that monk that sat in that square and they set him on fire?
Shandin Pete:Wow, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that's
Aaron Brien:might be off limits. Exactly where my mind went when you said that, oh yeah, when you said fast at a four way stop, my brain went straight to Tibetan, Monk on fire.
Shandin Pete:Man. I don't know. Man, I I'm coming up with the blank here, things you shouldn't wear to the native conference. No, I don't work.
Aaron Brien:Those are all just, it's
Shandin Pete:like, it's the variant of what we already talked about, right? You can
Aaron Brien:get and get into, like, real cliche stuff pretty fast, yeah,
Shandin Pete:yeah, let's see. How about things you shouldn't post on Facebook? No, it's cliche, right?
Kasey Nicholson:Is it? Post on Facebook? How about,
Shandin Pete:appropriate places to wear a button up to? But what about,
Aaron Brien:you know, a lot, a large portion of these Calvary men who came over and fought in the planes were Irish, yeah.
Shandin Pete:I mean, I didn't know that, but yeah,
Aaron Brien:I. Is it funny to think that? I've always thought it was funny. How would an Irish guy die by an
Shandin Pete:Irish guy die?
Aaron Brien:How do you scream in an Irish accent?
Shandin Pete:I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I know that's no no, no.
Aaron Brien:Hi, it's messed up because you didn't talk about people dying, but it's like, it's such a unique accent, yeah, how do you die? Irish?
Shandin Pete:He's got himself going.
Kasey Nicholson:I mean, that could, that could go to everything. How do you die? I mean, stereotypically too, like anything Australian, you know, like, yeah,
Shandin Pete:yeah, yeah.
Aaron Brien:I mean, I want to know how you try Irish.
Shandin Pete:I don't know. I don't know a lot of Irish things. I don't know. Man, we're running out, running out here, um, solutions, thinking of something. I know she is. She stopped painting to think she's on she's on mute, though, so she's trying to tell us something she's not sorry. I
Salisha Old Bull:had to blow my nose. I was thinking I always see this guy a cowboy hat when I go to work. Yeah. But it reminds me of people who wear chokers for some reason, okay, I thought, Man, you can just wear chokers anywhere, like there's nowhere you couldn't wear a choker, because I don't think there's anywhere you couldn't wear a cowboy hat.
Shandin Pete:So when is not appropriate to wear choker,
Salisha Old Bull:I think you could just wear a choker anywhere.
Shandin Pete:I think if you're getting a massage, you should take it off, because they might want to work on your neck. Right?
Aaron Brien:Yeah, for some reason the Joker does not match massage table.
Shandin Pete:Yeah? Just gotta get that off,
Aaron Brien:yeah? Or
Shandin Pete:do they make you take a choker off when you're going through TSA?
Salisha Old Bull:Have you ever tried it? I don't think so. Every
Shandin Pete:way your chokers through TSA, no, you always take it off. You always put it in,
Kasey Nicholson:make sure it's made of plastic, not real. You
Shandin Pete:can't use, you can't use shell casings. Yeah, through TSA, shell casing chokers.
Aaron Brien:Oh, the shell. I haven't seen one of them in a long I know. Yeah, that's like, that's like, 223,
Kasey Nicholson:and why? Chokers? Why? Why? What's the reason for chokers?
Salisha Old Bull:What does it even mean? The showcase things on the chokers. What is it? I mean,
Shandin Pete:how old are chokers? That's a good question. You know,
Kasey Nicholson:they just made, or were they just adornments? Or were they actually, aren't they really old?
Salisha Old Bull:Aren't they really old? I
Aaron Brien: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,
Shandin Pete:I see, I see a lot of crows with chokers. Old pictures again. Mr. TRP, what are you? What is it? What? What are you? Tribal research for? Protection. What are you do? What do you do?
Aaron Brien:Man, I don't know. We've done 60 episodes. We've done 60 episodes together. DRP report. Doesn't know what my job title is. I just forgot it. I forgot
Shandin Pete:it. Uh, oh, yeah. Tip Oh. Tipo guy. Man, I'm gonna Google one picture of a purple Yeah, you know, this is what I heard, 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 the warrior from getting his throat cut. You probably heard that, right?
Aaron Brien:I've never heard it.
Shandin Pete:That's what I went to that I'm of course, it's probably not true, but that's was the I've never seen an open
Salisha Old Bull:what, what solution? Oh, I was just trying to remember what you were saying in the beginning.
Shandin Pete:Oh, yeah. So I went through just some common things, like, you know, we laugh and we're humorous because we're working through our trauma, false, but partially, right? And we agreed on that, right? Did we? No,
Aaron Brien:I think, I think that's, I think that that's, that's a fact that native people deal with hardship. Let's say hardship with humor we do. But I really like if we get anything out of this podcast today, it's what Casey said, that, that there's for, just for as much as we do, that it's equal, that we also have the other side of that. I can't remember exactly what you said,
Kasey Nicholson:yeah, just you know, you got, you have your whole spill over trauma, but you also have all the feel, the the survival, or the living or, you know, like the the good stuff, yeah, the positive energy. I guess you got as much as you have the negative, you have the positive, you know, yeah, feel or to be better, or the resources or the tools that have been passed down as well. Not a lot of people don't, you know, take around, like and like Aaron said earlier, like that, we stay in a we it's almost, it's almost encouraged, or a big flex, as some people say to Yeah, to say I'm traumatized, why can't say I'm healed, I'm healing, or I'm healed, I'm happy, I'm enjoying life. I Yeah, you know, I'm, you know, like, I have these, these things passed on within me as well to epigenetics. Yeah, epigenetic epigenetics, this one makes it
Salisha Old Bull:epigenetics, epigenetic
Shandin Pete:and further, furthermore, oh, go ahead, Aaron, let's he's gotten I was
Aaron Brien:gonna say something, but now it has passed.
Shandin Pete:So the next thing that, yeah, okay, go
Aaron Brien:ahead. Go ahead. I don't try to make the joke work.
Shandin Pete:I'm not. I'm just recapping. Go
Aaron Brien:the jokes doing, yeah, to
Shandin Pete:recap. Then we dispelled the myth that natives use humor to test whether someone is native or not. False, right?
Aaron Brien: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 do with like their nativeness, yeah.
Shandin Pete:And it's difficult also to capture the essence of native humor via writing. However, I would say there's some really good books out there, books, though, because these are stories, right, that are pretty funny from native authors, but because it's a story, but it's hard to just do one liners or like, on the fly funny in writing, like to analyze native humor in an academic journal, probably a bit hard to do. Seems like
Aaron Brien:it has to be done by a native person. Yeah, wasn't
Shandin Pete:good. I was gonna
Kasey Nicholson:say another thing I think would be really interesting, interesting to like, you know, weed out of this the podcast too, is like, the difference, the differences between male and female humor, yeah, you know, yeah, you know, like, what's the the understanding of those things as well? Like, like, the power, I guess the power, or the the comedy structure, or the setup, because I know some set of some, some jokes of mine make the make more of the women laugh hard, yeah, and then some of the other ones 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 women laugh harder, like laugh hard. The men quiet down, which is weird,
Shandin Pete:making them jealous, yeah?
Aaron Brien:Making people's wives laugh Casey. Yeah,
Shandin Pete:that's
Kasey Nicholson:that's something I noticed, but then I'll point it out too, though,
Shandin Pete:you know, you still do that thing where you take your shirt off and you do something with your Oh, that's not my only fans. I don't know if you are. We'll put that in the show notes. They're only send that over to me. Okay, we'll get you some Casey drivers. Casey
Aaron Brien:dickelson, tickle,
Shandin Pete:yeah,
Kasey Nicholson: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 had a native or a female native comedian, come on too, like, the different perspectives, yeah, how jokes are brought up, and where they come from, and, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's quite the different perspective, just a different style, I guess you'd say yeah, on how they viewed humor, yeah, yeah,
Aaron Brien:and, and Sean Dean's gonna try to get him to with that joke again. Yeah, Shaman, a healer, shaman
Shandin Pete:and a medicine healer in a medicine man, we're gonna get that down. Who needed to go get a bipolar. Yeah, oh yeah, bipolar, bipolar, ADHD, ADHD
Kasey Nicholson:and diabetic, diabetic Cougar,
Aaron Brien:marry one, kill one and
Shandin Pete:man. But I think in the end, I think we we discover what we already really know is that, I mean you, as a professional in comedy, you work at 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, they could be somewhat homogeneous, but they could be pretty heterogeneous, if you will. But like for the Everyday Guy and the everyday Indian gal, you know, we work in, we we laugh in, like a tight community of people that we're familiar with or that we can share some common understandings, like nits, you say knits and people laugh. You say, speaker wire and people laugh. Maybe not these days, like kids don't understand the struggle of what you had to do to fix things and how handy speaker wire was. So these days, like the generations, they don't understand that speaker wire pop can to fix your muffler. They're like, Oh, I don't understand any of that. So I really, like the native comedian, has to really, it seems to me, has to navigate all those things, plus the generational differences of what's funny and what's not that's super, super challenging. And I see that in some of the work that I do, the students, I see their age, they have a different level of need of what they think is funny, what they think is interesting and how you ought to deliver that to them. But, you know, it's something that we can't capture. That's that's one of the problems with academics, 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 that is, and it can really generate the wrong idea about how we operate in our communities and how we how we function with with humor across different generations. So that, I mean, that's kind of the message I was trying to get across the things I was trying to discuss those challenges and how it really is. Now, I think everyone here was a bit shy. I was only one who put myself out there, self defecating. Dang,
Salisha Old Bull:God dang,
Shandin Pete:pretty dumb, yeah. So I don't know you, tell me. Tell me some last parting words of kind of the work, the intersection of what you do and how you try to maintain some sort of authenticity that's representative of you and you the community and the people that you grew up with, yeah, and
Kasey Nicholson:I think the biggest part of that is being like you said authentic, being genuine, not not being over like, not being too over the top, where you're like you feel like you're trying too hard to make people laugh or to like you Because of your own struggles, your own traumas, your own internal, you know, battles that you're having within yourself, trying to heal yourself by trying too hard like be be authentic. Be real. Be genuine as a comedian, as the native comedian, and be okay with drawing stories from the the uncles or, you know, the the family or the cousins, or the pow wow circle, or whatever it may be like, pulling those pulling that and share it. I, in my opinion, share it, not with only the native people, but for native, the native, the non native community that's out there, because they have to learn from they get. They have to learn from those books that are being very still but stereotypically written about us, those one liner jokes like that's where they get their information, and no one's going to know about our humor or the way we laugh or the way we talk or the way we tease. By reading books, we, as native comedians, have to go out there and tell our story, you know, through through our our stories, through our jokes. Yeah, and that's the way I feel I'm doing is like, I'm going into these non native crowds, and I'm giving them a good dose of how they think about us, you know, how they view us. And I'm, I'm turning it around where it's not only a funny joke, but it's a lesson. Like, you guys really think we're, we're want to be, you know, we're we scream around and we were crying around, you know, I mean, so here, this is what you think about, but on the other side, this is who we really 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 know, whatever you may be, whether it be economic, social, uh. You know, spiritual, whatever, maybe, yeah, but really trying to, you know, I feel as a native comedian, that not only am I trying to make people laugh, but also tell a story and to teach, yeah, you know. So they're like, Hey, do they really, you know, make that, that make it very thought provoking, you know, yeah, and, and I hope one day you know that we, some of us, comedians or producers or camera people, can together and actually do a really good documentary of native humor on camera. You know, that'd be awesome. You know, where you see comedians offstage, on stage, doing their thing. But also you see the the really tight knit circle of of real like, you know, like everyday 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 everywhere with it, and it'll only probably would be an hour and a half two hour documentary, but it'd be so beneficial to so many, even our own people. You know, yeah, about the art of comedy. You know about the art of humor, I guess you'd call it, but yeah,
Shandin Pete: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, maybe even the next episode. So you can finish that joke for me, so you can use it you might tell stage
Kasey Nicholson:that I use some of it. I
Shandin Pete:could use some citations. All we ask
Aaron Brien:is, you make it funny.
Kasey Nicholson:I think it not being funny is funny.
Shandin Pete:I know this guy tried to tell me this joke. Yeah,
Kasey Nicholson:no, okay,
Aaron Brien:our only ask is that you make it funny. Awesome, man. Well,
