Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
Laughter may be the best medicine, and it’s also a great teacher.
That’s the message behind “Gone Native,” a series of animated, digital shorts by comedy illustrator Joey Clift, Cowlitz, that leverage comedy as an entry point to education about Native people.
The series addresses “weird stuff Native American and Indigenous people deal with way too often,” according to the series website.
The current five-show deal, done in partnership with Comedy Central, includes shorts about spirit animals, Native identity, sports mascots, burial grounds and the lack of education about Native people in schools.
The digital series is now on Comedy Central’s social channels, including YouTube, Comedy Central’s Animated Channel, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
“I love Joey; he makes me laugh every time he talks,” said Comedy Central Vice President Erika Soto Lamb, who spotted Clift’s work in a comedy lab and helped formulate the deal.
‘Weird microaggressions’
Clift describes himself on his website as an “all-around comedy guy.”
A comedian, writer and animator, he has written for such series as “Spirit Rangers,” on Netflix, and “Molly of Denali” for PBS.
Clift got his inspiration for the “Gone Native” series from social media several years ago.
“Friends of mine were posting on social media about protests against the Washington, D.C., NFL team name,” Clift told ICT, “and somebody commented on the post, saying, ‘I just got my DNA test in the mail, and it says I’m 1/50th Indian and I think the team’s name is fine! So,everybody just lay off!’”
Clift wanted to respond but couldn’t find anything he liked online.
“I really wanted to say something and share with this person, to explain why what they were saying was not the coolest take when it comes to Native identity,” he said. “The only things that I could find at the time were long, think pieces. And I thought to myself, ‘I’m probably not going to be able to get this person to read a 10-page essay about the complexities of Native identity, but I might be able to get them to watch a funny, two-minute, animated comedy short.’”
The discovery formed the inspiration for the first short, “Telling People You’re Native American When You’re Not Native Is A Lot Like Telling A Bear You’re A Bear When You’re Not A Bear.”
Clift said the 24-word title is “basically a Fiona-Apple-album-title-of-a-name if there ever was one.”
Clift posted the video online and it was distributed with help from IllumiNative, the Native rights and awareness organization.
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“I was taking that short around the festivals,” Clift said, “and a lot of people were asking me questions like, ‘Hey, there’s so many other weird microaggressions that Native folks run into. Do you have any ideas for other shorts?’ So I expanded that to a digital series that I pitched to a comedy lab incubator.”
Clift was one of the winners in 2019 of the Yes And Laughter Lab, an incubation lab for comedy coming from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, where Lamb was a Leadership Committee member.
The lab got him on Lamb’s radar, and she connected him with other people in the Comedy Central sphere. In 2021, Comedy Central co-produced his second short, “How to Cope with Your Team Changing Its Native American Mascot,” which drew more than a million views on Comedy Central’s socials.
Clift got grant funding through Pop Culture CoLab, and produced three more shorts. By then Lamb was “totally game to help have Comedy Central distribute all the shorts,” Clift said.
The five-part series is not available what Clift calls Comedy Central’s television network, or the “terrestrial TV channel,” as Clift calls it. But it’s available to the “cord cutters,” he said, “which is where the young people are. I work for the company and the cord has been cut.”
Clift said the feedback has been positive.
“That’s been something that’s so great about this series,” he said. “I originally made the first short just because it was funny to me and I wasn’t necessarily worried about outside audiences’ opinions, but when it started going through the festival circuit and when it was posted online it really blew up on Native TikTok and Instagram. That short has around 4 million views across social media. I’ve gotten such great feedback from Native folks and non-Native folks, telling me that they really appreciate that.”
One of his shorts, “Every Time You Say Something Is Your Spirit Animal, You Have To Give Every Native American Person You Know $25,” particularly hit home.
“I definitely had a lot of non-Natives tell me after watching that short, ‘Oh, note to self, I’m not supposed to say that at powwows.’”
Looking ahead
Clift was among the first class of winners among the Yes And Laughter Lab, known as YALL, where Lamb was among the first parties helping to focus on comedy dealing with important social issues.
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“I really loved his work and was grateful to build the connection there,” Lamb told ICT. “That was part of my charge — to figure out how we can do more from the Comedy Central standpoint and more broadly, to support comedy that goes beyond a punchline, that educates and engages people, activates them to take action or to change the way they think and see the world.”
Clift was influenced by seeing early online Native comedy in mainstream spaces.
“Growing up in Washington State, I really loved comedy shows like ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Family Guy,’ and then the 1491s [comedy troupe] online, and, of course, Oneida comedian Charlie Hill,” he said. “But honestly, there wasn’t any Native comedy that I saw in mainstream media, but I saw great comedy from my relatives, and my really funny aunties and uncles, parents, my classmates and friends. I’ve known forever that Native people are funny.”
Clift acknowledges that Native comedy is still a small community.
“I never met Charlie Hill in his lifetime, but I know tons of Native comedians who toured with him and opened for him and were mentored by him,” he said. “And the 1491s are based around Oklahoma and Arizona. We’ve definitely been in writers rooms together, and we’re all friends or one degree away from each other.”
While Clift is a comedy writer, he also does illustration/animation, so is a member of a separate union than the Writers Guild of America, whose members are currently on strike.
“We definitely stand in solidarity with the WGA and support them, but the Animation Guild is not on strike,” he told ICT.
“What’s so great about this website for ‘Gone Native’ is that for the page for each short, we include links to resources that allow people a deeper dive than a two-minute comedy short where a guy gets mauled by a bear over and over again should probably give you,” he said, laughing.
And more are in the works, he said.
“As far as more shorts go, there are ones that I have in the production pipeline at the moment,” he said. “I’d love to make a short called, ‘A Complete List Of Things That You Can Ask Native People About That Is Not Thanksgiving,’ and I got a couple of other ideas.”
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