Che Jim: What do you see when you picture findings at an archaeological dig? Jewellery, pottery, tools?

That's all true, but at Native American sites, we've also discovered dice made from animal bones, and pottery shards, sticks with pockets, and leather-covered balls used for games of, you guessed it, stick ball. Ancient nerf guns. Well, sort of. 

In short, things made for fun. These artefacts show us how natives viewed and interacted with the world thousands of years ago, and help connect ancestors from the past to Natives today. 

Hi, I'm Che Jim and welcome to Crash Course: Native American History. 

[Theme music]

I'll be the first to say that not all Native people are the same. We all have different tribal affiliations, different traditions, a different taste in Pop Tarts—minus the cinnamon one. 

But there are aspects of being native that bring us all together. Ways native peoples have viewed the world since time immemorial that tie us to our ancestors.

And understanding native worldview can bring us all closer to seeing each other as nuanced, complex people and not just stereotypes. 

Like if you believe everything the media tells you, you'd think all Native Americans were stoic and serious, always serving resting indigenous face and spouting some next level wisdom with a single tear streaming down their cheek. 

But really, humour and fun have been parts of native culture and worldview for generations. I mean, how else do you think I became a comedian? It's in my genes. 

Those kid-sized weapons I mentioned earlier weren't just for teaching practical hunting skills. They were toys. Native kids in the past would have used these mini weapons in games that taught cooperation and conflict resolution while building relationships and having fun. 

Native kids do the same thing today. I learned a lot from crushing my cousins at paintball. 

Natives have long considered laughter to be what we call good medicine, or anything that promotes the healing or well-being of mind, body, or spirit, often all three. 

To understand Native humour is to get a good glimpse into native worldviews. As Vine Deloria Jr., a historian and activist of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe once wrote, "One of the best ways to understand a people is to know what makes them laugh... Laughter encompasses the limits of the soul."

Native humour is often dark, satirical, cheeky, and provocative. Abenaki writer Joseph Bruchac notes that teasing can be used to remind people that they aren't better than anyone else. 

And writer Tiffany Midge, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, tells a story of laughing with her dying mother when trying to figure out what to do with her remains. That conversation led to the title of her book, Bury My Heart at Chuck-E-Cheese's.

You know, human remains probably weren't the weirdest thing that you would find at Chuck-E-Cheese's when I was a kid. That ball pit was full of secrets. 

And for Natives, humour wasn’t just for fun. It was a way to create community and bond the way people do when they share inside jokes, or roast someone on their tribe's private Facebook page, or text memes back and forth.

Personally, this is my favourite [meme on-screen].

Many tribes, like the Pueblo people, even consider humour to be sacred.

Some of their ceremonies feature sacred clowns called koshares, who are painted in black and white and act out bad behaviours like gluttony or laziness to teach the community about what not to do. There might be some light ridicule too if you haven't been on your A game lately. 

And koshares aren't just funny. They have natural powers like the ability to bring rain. 

In the past, many Christian missionaries and anthropologists documented different variations of native clowns or tricksters, but they usually didn't get the joke, especially because clowns would often make fun of the European colonisers themselves. 

Self-awareness, not the settlers' strong suit. 

Those clowns were part of a centuries long tradition of natives using humour to cope and build resilience, finding ways to laugh about tough stuff like colonisation and persecution. 

Because if you can’t make fun of the colonisers, who can you make fun of?

The confusion white colonisers felt when trying to interpret native humour has shown up in books, movies, and TV shows, where indigenous representation was,  for so long, a product of white imaginations, often depicting native people as vicious, violent, and humourless, and covered in war paint 24/7. 

And like we talked about in episode 3, those inaccurate and stereotypical representations of natives have real consequences, impacting everything from how Natives are treated by police and the courts to the mental health of Native youth and much more. 

But accurate Native-led representations fight against that. These days, popular TV shows are bringing native comedic traditions to a wider audience.

Like the shows Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls were either made up by or with the help of indigenous creators, and much of the worldview represented in them comes from actual lived native experiences. 

I can watch these shows and be like, "Yep, they get me." 

And then there are folks like me, indigenous content creators bringing native humour to millions of people online.

Humour like this. [Shows TikTok]

Dakota and Diné actor, comedian, and activist Dallas Goldtooth has said that humour can also be an important tool in reclaiming power from oppressors by letting that joy fuel action.

By the way, Goldtooth is a member of the 1491s, a native sketch comedy group who posts short online videos, and appears in both Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls. 

What's the native equivalent of a Renaissance man?

For Goldtooth and many natives, the ability to laugh at our oppressors and poke fun at serious things helps take back a little bit of power from those hierarchies and return it to the natives. 

Cuz it turns out to be fun and games have a lot of power. For example, a spear throwing game called chunkey may have been used to hash out diplomatic relationships between tribes.

Like Fortnite, but instead of ruining friendships, it strengthens them. 

While conflict and war were common among native nations before Europeans arrived, their diplomatic practices also showcase another important part of native worldview.

Reciprocity, or interdependence between people and all living and non-living things. Another way to think of it is I take care of you and you take care of me. 

And when it comes to relationships with other tribes, peace was good for trade and trade was good for survival. 

Let me tell you a story about one of the most famous alliances in native history. 

Generations ago, five nations were at war with each other. A tribal leader named Tadadaho had murdered the wife and daughter of another leader, Hayo'wetha.

But one day, a man called Peacemaker, who wanted to spread peace and unity among the nations, visited Hayo'wetha and helped him let go of his anger. 

As the story goes, Peacemaker snapped an arrow in half and showed how easy it was to break. Then he tied five arrows together and tried again, but the arrows held firm.

They were stronger together.

So Peacemaker and Hayo'wetha demonstrated this strength to Tadadaho, who agreed to join them under the great law of peace. 

The five nations that came together as a result became known as the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy, an alliance among the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations. Later, the Tuscarora would join, bringing their ranks to six.

The Tuscarora were running on Indian time.

To celebrate their unity, the Haudenosaunee dug up a white pine tree and threw their weapons in the hole. And then they planted a new tree above that hole and named it the tree of peace. 

And that’s the story of Peacemaker. 

[Drinks hot cocoa, sputters because it's too hot]

Delicious. 

The story of Peacemaker demonstrates the strength of native interdependence.

We can see this value in the popular native phrase, All My Relations. In Lakota, Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ. The idea of All My Relations is that everything, not just ourselves, is part of same great tapestry of the universe. 

This dude [Hank Green pictured] is my cousin, spiritually speaking.

And reciprocity doesn't just extend to people but to living things like plants and animals and even natural elements like fire and wind. 

In fact, the land is so important to native cultures that we made a whole episode about it.

And there are lots of ways to express that give and take relationship with it, like saying a prayer after a hunt or returning an animal's bones to the land. 

Or not fracking! Hem. 

Or there's the tradition of the honourable harvest. This is a way of harvesting plants for medicinal, cultural and food purposes that seeks to use Earth's resources respectfully and gratefully.

While there are variations from nation to nation, overall the idea is to ask for permission before harvesting and only take what’s necessary, while making sure there's plenty left behind. 

Pretty much the OG reduce, reuse, recycle. 

After harvesting, the community can show their gratitude by saying a prayer or reciprocating the gift through giving and offering and caring for the land so the plants can continue to grow. 

That reciprocity and gratitude also extends to the way Native communities view wealth. 

For example, one traditional gathering is called the potlatch, originating from the chinuk wawa term meaning to gift or give. It is much more than just a gathering. It is a way of understanding the world. 

The practice, which is still used today, is rooted in honouring relationships with fellow humans and with the earth through reciprocity. It is an economic and legal system that redistributes material and intangible wealth as a way to honour debts. 

Potlatches maintain a system of existence based on honouring the whole above the self. 

These and other ceremonies are important ways of gathering together in community and they can bring together all these different values — gratitude, respect, generosity, humour — to preserve Native culture and further bond us together. 

These values also show up in the ways many tribes are structured through systems of kinship or family ties. The Cheyenne, in particular, have a strict structure of kinship, though humour is a big part of it, too. 

Certain family relationships, especially the in-laws, are expected to tease and joke with each other to maintain harmony, and the health and balance of the family unit directly influences the health and the balance of the tribal band, and the Cheyenne nation as a whole. 

The history of Native Americans has often been overshadowed by the arrival of Europeans and the subsequent generations of mistreatment and cultural destruction. 

But,  to bring it back to my boy Peacemaker, we're stronger together. 

Native worldviewsx in all their complexity, depth, and diversity, derive from thousands of years of history and tradition. And generations of playing games, making peace, sharing feast, joking about death, and making fun of ourselves and our oppressors have built a foundation for tribal strength and perseverance today. 

Next time, we're going to explore the complicated history between Native Americans and archaeology, and I will see you then.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Native American History, which was made at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.