COMMENTING ON REPRESENTATIONS OF NATIVE PEOPLE in Western fiction, Margaret Atwood observes that diverse attributes were assigned to them. However, “lacking among them was funny.… On the whole Natives were treated by almost everyone with utmost gravity, as if they were either too awe-inspiring as blood-curdling savages or too sacrosanct in their status of holy victim to allow any comic reactions either to them or by them. Furthermore, nobody ever seems to have asked them what if anything they found funny” (1990, 243–44). Looking at a wide range of texts from genres as diverse as fiction, poetry, drama, and film by contemporary Native, mixedblood, or Métis writers, this study not only abundantly illustrates the Native sense of humor. It also underlines humor's centrality in contemporary Native North American writing, reveals that there is plenty that “they” — that is, Native people, or Native writers in particular — find funny, and demonstrates how humor enters into the constant renegotiation of Nativeness.

The cover image, “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” by Nisenan Maidu/Hawaiian artist Harry Fonseca, exemplifies several features of humor in contemporary Native writing. The image prominently features Coyote, who is not only the classic trickster figure in the oral traditions of many Native cultures, but in the continuation of these traditions lives on in texts by contemporary Native writers. Dancing onto the stage, this ultimate survivor, like Native humor itself, constitutes an assurance and celebration of Native survival and Native identity.