Navajo comedians draw from real-life funnies
By Alysa Landry
"Indians have found a humorous side of nearly every problem, and the experiences of life have generally been so well defined through jokes and stories that they have become a thing in themselves," Deloria wrote. "The more desperate the problem, the more humor is directed to describe it."
Take, for example, jokes about Christopher Columbus, the man credited with discovering America. Or General George Armstrong Custer, the U.S. Army officer and cavalry commander who served in the Civil War, then went West to lead the nation in the wars against American Indians.
These two men bear the brunt of most American Indian jokes, Deloria said, because tribes find common ground by joking about shared experiences.
"It is said that when Columbus landed, one Indian turned to another and said, "Well, there goes the neighborhood,'" Deloria wrote. "Another version has two Indians watching Columbus land and one saying to the other, "Maybe if we leave them alone, they will go away.' A favorite cartoon ... showed a flying saucer landing while an Indian watched. The caption was "Oh no, not again.'"