Kenneth Lincoln's

Indi'n Humor

Drawing on history, psychology, folklore, linguistics, anthropology, and the arts, this book challenges "wooden Indian" stereotypes to redefine negative attitudes and humorless approaches to Native American peoples. Moving from tribal culture to interethnic literature, Lincoln explores such topics as the traditional Trickster of origin myths, historical ironies, Euroamericans "playing Indian," feminist Indian humor at home, contemporary painters and playwrights reinventing Coyote, popular mixedblood music, and Red English.

Lincoln turns to the texts of Native American authors including Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and N. Scott Momaday, to illustrate the rich tradition of Native American humor: a tradition that evolved as the result of--and has survived in spite of--a history of unconscionable suffering and sadness during the course of which ninety-seven percent of the native populations were destroyed. A study of the literary humor of poets like Paula Gunn Allen, Diane Burns, and Linda Hogan provides further evidence of the importance of the role of humor in Native American culture.

Indi'n Humor documents and interprets the contexts of laughter among Native Americans, as they see and are seen by the rest of the world. The study comes to focus comically on the poets, visual artists, playwrights, and novelists who make up the cultural renaissance of the past twenty years. Focusing on ethnic humor, from jokes in bars and powwows, to intercultural politics, to literature, Indian Humor will enlighten and entertain readers interested in Native American culture, as well as scholars of American and Ethnic Studies, and humor theorists.

About the Author

Kenneth Lincoln was raised in northwest Nebraska, where he was adopted into the Oglala Sioux. He received a Ph.D. from Indiana University and currently teaches Modern and Native American Literatures at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has developed American Indian Studies curriculum and chaired the country's first interdisciplinary Master's Program in American Indian Studies. Lincoln has published extensively in the field--including Native America Renaissance (1983) and The Good Red Road: Passages into Native America (1987).

Praise for
Indi'n Humor

"A major contribution both to contemporary cultural studies and to our understanding of Native American cultures and their peoples. A pioneering study, Indian Humor analyzes for the first time the five hundred year-old tradition of the intercultural genres of comedy peculiarly "Indian." This germinal study challenges American stereotypes of the Native American as passive, vanquished, sad victim. Impressive in its range, compelling in the subtlety of its analysis, this book is a major contribution to literary criticism, and to Native American studies."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
Harvard University

"Lincoln has covered the waterfront--several waterfronts--in putting together this comprehensive and exhaustive study of Indian humor. Far beyond a joke book or cultural exposition, this is a fine work to be read carefully--and many times--for its insightful display of the various kinds of Indian humor and satire."
--Vine Deloria, Jr.,
author of Custer Died for Your Sins

"This book is wondrous. Lincoln identifies and traces various aspects of the American Indian comic spirit by calling together multiple traditions and cultures as well as his own experiences and insights among Indian people. His innovative style and refreshingly clear prose make his study a sheer delight."
--Greg Sarris,
University of California, Los Angeles