THE URBANE INDIAN: Good intentions conflict with good intentions

Ponder this: You write something that explores a unique aspect of a culture or society in an interesting, fun and critical context. However, in the journey to bring that exploration to the masses, it first has to be filtered through a process that could potentially rob it of some of its originality and reality. It's called editing. You may have heard of it.

In my case, it's a new book I've spent the better part of the last two years writing and compiling. It deals with essays from various people involved, in some way, with the Native community and, in particular, its funny bone. Humour, by its very nature, is usually at somebody's expense, especially Native humour where no prisoners are taken, even at our own cost. Depending on the nature of the joke, our humour can be racist (but in a funny way), sexist (but in a funny way), nationalist (but in a funny way) and exceedingly self-deprecatory (in every way). It reflects attitudes towards us from outside the community and as a direct result, attitudes we have towards ourselves within the community. Part of the point of the book was detailing its nature, origins and characteristics for others to appreciate. Academics love stuff like that.

Within the covers of ME FUNNY, the book's title, are compositions dealing with the intrinsic humour in traditional storytelling, teaching, the Cree language, and a variety of other topics, including my own contribution that explores how Native humour often comes into conflict with that multi-headed animal, political correctness. Little did I realize the topic of my essay would become a critical point in the editing of the book. My next book should be on irony.

As the book was in its final stages of editing, my editor (a talented and well-respected woman in the publishing industry) informed me that she had issues with some of the material contained within its pages. Specifically, she felt some of the jokes I'd gathered and was using to illustrate Native humour, and to separate the various chapters, were sexist. She urged me to remove them in favour of less offensive material. As an avowed feminist-not that there's anything wrong with that-she was viewing the text from her own particular political agenda, something we all do to some extent. In fact, in one particularly unique incident, she suggested I change the gender of the central character in a joke, from male to female, in order to create a better sense of sexual parity. Otherwise, she felt concerned that parts of the book would offend many of her "sisters."

As a member of one oppressed sector of society to another, I am sympathetic. However, as a member of the Ojibway nation, who is interested in presenting an authentic perspective on Native humour, I had problems with having that same honest perspective filtered through the consciousness of an educated middle-class White woman. I was afraid my creation was being "white-washed," and certain distinctive idiosyncrasies "whited-out" in favour of not offending a segment of the population. I blanched at the thought.

Now it's important that I say some of my best friends are White. In fact, I've been known to date a few. An ancient Ojibway belief states that we all look alike in the dark. I've always believed White people are an imaginative people with an interesting and wonderful culture, and I've always held them, their cuisine, and their literature in high esteem.

I have always been proud to support them in whatever way I can. I own several Stephen King and Pierre Berton books, and have an air conditioner. (White people can be quite innovative and clever when they want.)

Concerned that maybe I was being anti-feminist by wanting to include these various examples of Native humour, I decided to test that possibility. During a summer barbeque, I invited over 10 well-educated people for some traditional Aboriginal burgers and Tandoori chicken; seven of my guests were women, eight of them non-Caucasian (mostly Native and south Asian), all of them were either attending or were graduates of universities, or are professors. I brought up the topic and read them some of the jokes. Nobody was offended. In fact, they found them to be quite funny and urged me to fight for their inclusion.

Since context is critical-any first year university student can tell you that-what's the point in studying something if it has been editorially corrupted? During the early 1900s, a photographer named Edward Curtis often took detailed photographs of West Coast cultures, but posed his subjects and told them how to act, thereby limiting their authenticity. There's one famous photo of a Kwakiutl man holding up another man's arm, who appears to be dead, and biting the skin. This created the rumour that the Kwakiutl were cannibals. But legend says the photo was staged. Luckily, the outfit he was wearing was genuine, so that's something I guess.

Janine Willie, an Aboriginal PhD student in Native literature says "If you think of Aboriginal humour as a residual impact seen as a scar from colonialism, it would seem ridiculous to prioritize removing the scar over healing the whole person. Making cosmetic changes to the humour is not useful in understanding underlying causes and oppressions. In fact, it actually blurs the cause of the humour (patriarchy, Christianity, colonization, heterosexism etc.) and actively works against or prevents an engaging, critical, feminist understanding of the humour. I think, ultimately, it could be counterproductive to a vital feminist, anti-oppression analysis of the subject matter. Hopefully, the humour would spark critical issues and questions for the students and hopefully the teacher would be able to facilitate a good critical discussion on it." Sounds good to me.

Now I am aware that I am male writing about what could be considered a feminist issue. I am powwow dancing through a mine-field. However, I've seen many non-Natives write about Native issues. And my more relevant question is this: Is it any less questionable to have a non-Native woman telling a Native person putting together a book on Native humour what jokes he may or may not incorporate to best illustrate the Aboriginal funny bone?

What little I do know is that in many ways, it's no different from Aboriginal politics in that the concerns and definition of a feminist vary from population to population. But as I had it described to me once, the top five priorities of a well-educated, middle-class White woman are substantially different from those of a Native woman living on the reserve, and from those in the city for that matter.

So again, I brought up the subject on my last trip home to my reserve. Alice Williams is an amazing quilter and a politically active Native woman. She also could not believe my story.

"This is Indian humour. If you change it to what is acceptable to her and her class, then you have taken away the Indian humour; what it has changed to is no longer Indian humour. The idea of this book is to talk and tell and share about Indian humour. It is not to talk about the values of well-schooled, middle-class White women and what they want to get across, even if it is politically correct.... This is not the place for anyone else to expound and use their privilege, prestige, power, position and advantages to push and promote their agenda. Let them do it in their own writings and speeches. Goodness knows, there's many more doors open for them than to us to share and talk about stuff. "

In the end, after terrific phone battles and blood-soaked e-mails, I believe I managed to maintain the integrity of my humble little book. It is indeed a fair and accurate exploration of Native humour. I managed to keep in most of the sexually-explicit but authentic Indian jokes. However, due to my editor's perseverance (by the way, don't get me wrong, otherwise she's an excellent editor), ME FUNNY is now fit for educated, middle-class White women, who are, after all, my major audience base.