Editors:Had Kate Morris and Linda Morris published “Camping Out with Miss Chief: Kent Monkman's Ironic Journey” while I was still writing “American Humor and Matters of Empire,” I would certainly have cited their essay as an exemplar.1 Their discussion of how Monkman's paintings satirize the European invasion of North America through ironic and camp parodies of imperialist iconography illustrates how matters of empire—representational and expressive practices acquired via unequal transnational political relationships—can draw marginalized voices, genres, and media into the mainstream of American humor studies while honoring their specific historical and political standpoints. In detailing how Monkman's comic critique filters imperialist representations through his native gaze, the Morrises' analysis in “Camping Out with Miss Chief” also exposes that critique as a specifically postcolonial rhetoric whose hybrid comic techniques construct its theme.As presented by the Morrises, Monkman's humor counters racist representations of Native identity with a vision of universal humanism led by “a transcendent, transgender figure, shepherding all of her people into the future.”2 This trickster serves as the chief agent of his challenge to Euro-settler hegemony, but Monkman also draws on Native traditions of irony and parody to contest white nostalgic views of early contact and settlement (268-69). He does not, however, craft his nonverbal message in an Indigenous Cree tradition of vernacular materials and art forms, although he comically invokes (white images of) them in Artist and Model (2012), whose nearly nude Miss Chief in headdress and stilettos captures the image of a naked European as a stick figure on deerskin. Rather, Monkman brings his historical and ideological standpoint as a member of the Cree people to the representational practices of European art: monumental history paintings that celebrate conquest and colonization of North America.Working in modern acrylic on canvas instead of oil, Monkman lifts landscapes from Albert Bierstadt, inserts iconic references to Edward Curtis, cites subjects from Paul Kane and figural groupings from Thomas Eakins, and invokes key moments in American history, such as the US Seventh Cavalry's defeat at Little Bighorn. Monkman then appropriates, reverses, and queers these matters of empire and their implied claims of Euro-American superiority, power, and domination for comic irony and satire. His imitation with a symbolic difference (to use Linda Hutcheon's definition of parody) creates a comic clash of incongruity that not only “underscores the degree to which stereotypes have historically been perpetuated through visual art” and “call[s] into question our most beloved myths of the Wild West,” as the Morrises point out but also reveals the postcolonial hybridity animating his critique.3Having the hybridity of Monkman's work so clearly delineated also inspired me to ask a new question: where do audiences fit in the comic rhetorics outlined by the matters-of-empire rubric? In focusing on the vectors of influence on comic genres and techniques, I had detailed humor's production at the expense of reception. But, of course, production aims at successful reception, and Monkman's queered application of imperialist materials to the standpoints of resistant subjects highlights the “post” in postcolonial: a dual audience of insiders and outsiders, the colonized people asserting their right to self-representation and the imperial masters confronting this reversed gaze in the ongoing struggle between First Nations and settler ones. And unlike the hybrid neocolonial humor of intersectionality, which Joanne Gilbert sees as “performing marginality” for an audience who pays (literally, in cash, for stand-up comedy) to see its hegemony unmasked, hybrid postcolonial humor makes the oppressor the butt of the joke.4Indeed, the Morrises' analysis of the proudly naked, proudly androgynous Miss Chief suggests the degree to which she proudly embodies that postcolonial hybridity. The transgender two-spirit Share Eagle Testicle is also transhistorical in dress and time, a trickster within and—as the artist's alter ego—behind the canvas. Unlike the vernacular humor of the postcolonial Anglo-American experience that Walter Blair outlined in the 1930s, Monkman's comic sensibility as defined by Kate and Linda Morris “Camping Out with Miss Chief” provides a much needed example of American postcolonial comic rhetoric in a truly Native vein.5 And it testifies to the survival of Monkman's distinct vision of nation and self. I am grateful to Monkman for his art and the Morrises for their contribution to American humor studies.Judith Yaross LeeOhio UniversityEditors:In “The Comedy of Survivance in James Welch's Fools Crow,” John Wharton Lowe demonstrates how, by entangling “all of the novel's characters in the humor in varying ways,” Welch's novel creates a “comic structure of understanding that belies the tragic, which has all too often been used as a talisman to define Natives by dominant settler culture.”6 Indeed, well-meaning postcolonial interpretations of Indigenous literatures tend to highlight Euro-American domination and destruction of Native cultures in ways that actually uphold the colonizer at the center of their scholarly narratives. As Hawaiian historian Noelani Arista put it in her discussion of historiography about Hawai‘i, “revisionist work's emphasis on restoring ‘agency’” to Indigenous people can have the unintended consequence of recursively reifying “the unreflective use of Western historiographical paradigms, tropes, and plots in telling histories of culturally Othered peoples.”7For me, the power of Welch's novel—and Lowe's reading of it—inheres not so much in its deployment of survivance in the face of Anglo-American incursions as in its structural resistance to appropriation in Anglo-American terms. That is, the fact that the novel's Blackfeet characters' humor is not about or aimed at Anglo-Americans makes it harder to frame such humor as an act of agency or resistance in the face of the colonizer. Rather, it is simply a part of everyday life in Blackfeet culture. In fact, up until the end of the novel, which dramatizes the 1870 Blackfeet massacre at Marias Creek, it portrays a world that does not require, and often ignores, the colonizer's presence. As Lowe describes it, “The narrative focuses on Native cultures that have little interaction with settler society and that do not pay much attention to it” (285). Emphasizing and amplifying stories that function perfectly well without white colonizers—even as villains—at their center offers an antidote to postcolonial studies that may unwittingly foreground Anglo involvement in an attempt to celebrate Indigenous agency. The fact that the novel's “humor pertains more or less to the Indigenous culture than to contact with the settler world” almost forces non-Indigenous readers to experience the humor on its own terms, without reference to themselves (Lowe 294).But I would not go so far as to frame this or any other novel as a primer on Indigenous humor for non-Indigenous readers. After all, even as readers parse diction or thoughts that may feel unfamiliar to them, they are still reading a novel, that most European of literary forms. Welch's use of historical fiction allows non-Indigenous readers to cling to their own familiar epistemologies through the form. As Emerson writes, “My giant goes with me wherever I go.”8 If Indigenous literature and literary scholarship about it are themselves contact zones of a sort, maybe the best they can do is to remind us, over and over again, that our ways of thinking are culturally constructed, that they are not the only ways of thinking.Todd ThompsonProfessor of EnglishIndiana University of PennsylvaniaEditors:In “The Differing Shades of Redface,” Adrian Manning discusses the evolving depiction of Native Americans in film and television and draws attention to Native American comedic stereotypes perpetrated by white media. At the end of his piece, Manning calls for further study in multiple areas, and he mentions Native American comedy as a potential source for future analysis. I would add another possible area of study that would enhance Manning's analysis of the satirical stage of development: Native American performers who provide input into Native American characters on shows that feature mostly white producers and performers. On television, two characters come to mind to which Manning's strategy could be applied—John Redcorn from King of the Hill and Chief Ken Hotate from Parks and Recreation. Both characters illustrate Manning's description of the satirical because they “draw on stereotypes in order to expose, critique, and dispel them in what can be argued is a form of countereradication of Native American culture.”9 Native American actor Jonathan Joss brought his experience to both characters in his portrayal of them, and his advocacy for positive Native American representation is indicative of Native American performers and characters who are participants in comic representations rather than objects for caricature.As a character on an animated program, John Redcorn (Jonathan Joss) specifically makes for a strong counterbalance to the animated depiction of Native Americans in Merry Melodies that represents the stereotypical phase. Of course, one can easily argue that Redcorn's characterizations throughout the series vacillate among the stereotypical, the parodic, and the satirical. In the early seasons especially, Redcorn's character is merely a running gag poking light fun at Native American depictions in the popular imagination. Still, Redcorn develops from a more parodic construction of Native American identity to a character who ends the series as a self-employed talent agent. While King of the Hill satirizes Native American stereotypes and characterizations, the program is nevertheless limited in its imagination of how a character like Redcorn can transcend his status as other in the community around him, even though the character enjoys a measure of success.In Parks and Recreation, Ken Hotate (Jonathan Joss), chief of the fictional Wamapoke tribe, only appears in five episodes, with his character's most important appearance being in “Harvest Festival” (2011). His presence regularly forces the citizens of Pawnee to confront their ancestors' violent and racist actions against Native Americans during the settlement of the land, which symbolizes a clear condemnation of the settlement of the United States as a whole. As a businessman representing his tribe in the mostly white town of Pawnee, Hotate illustrates the multiple interests and experiences of Native American people.Both characters would be fascinating additions to Manning's study because they are developed throughout multiple seasons and offer a breadth of material for study and analysis, much more than I have provided in this brief space. That both are portrayed by Joss, an actor of Comanche and White Mountain Apache descent, is also an important feature because of the input he provided for both characters. Although the production teams for both series represent Native American culture largely though a white lens, that a Native American actor was able to provide insight and depth into the characters allowed for the possibility of more fully developed Native American comedic characters shaped for white audiences not by stereotypical expectation alone but by the lived experience of Native American performers. As Joss notes in an interview, “It's so great to be a part of the joke instead of the joke.”Silas Kaine EzellOklahoma Baptist UniversityEditors:I am delighted that Studies in American Humor is helping to foster a necessary conversation between humor studies and ecocriticism—literary areas and methodologies that have seldom been seen as fellow travelers. Punyashree Panda's article “Indigenous Humor in Thomas King's The Back of the Turtle: An Ecocritical Perspective” helps to advance that critical conversation not only by asserting that humor is a powerful rhetorical tool for environmentalists (literary and otherwise) but also by using Thomas King's 2014 novel The Back of the Turtle to remind us of the remarkable power of humor within Indigenous communities and their representative literatures.This conversation is especially important because there has been such a lamentable dearth of humor in environmental writing. There are exceptions, of course. The article mentions Edward Abbey and David Gessner; I would add to this short list Ellen Meloy, Robert Michael Pyle, John T. Price, Nicole Walker, and Suzanne Roberts, as well as ecocritic Nicole Seymour, whose recent book Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age (2018) is an important step in the right direction. By and large, though, we environmentalists tend to take ourselves very seriously—too seriously for our own good, I would argue. In response to Panda's helpful essay, I would like to pose several follow-up questions to further advance what I see as the fruitful and emergent discussion between humor studies scholars and ecocritics that Panda's work helps to promote.Should environmental writing deploy humor as an offensive tool or wield it as a form of self-protection? Or, as I've framed this question elsewhere, should environmental humor be wielded as sword or shield? Panda mentions Edward Abbey, whose work is usually a form of offense (sometimes in both senses of that word, as he himself recognized). Abbey claimed that he used humor to “entertain” his friends and “ulcerate” his enemies. His comedy was satire, and his satire was Juvenalian rather than Horatian. Indeed, Cactus Ed was a strategic provocateur who took real pride in his ability to be abrasive. But do we agree with Abbey that environmental humor should be used as a means of attack? If not, how should we articulate the value of humor in promoting resilience, cooperation, or mutual support?How can environmental writers use humor to avoid being perceived as smug, condescending, or judgmental? One of the perennial liabilities of being an environmental writer is that readers often reasonably assume, before they read word one, that they are about to be berated. In addition to having a reputation for being depressing and/or angry, environmental writing is often polemical and argumentative. While we might point out that the urgency of the environmental crisis makes such writing necessary, the writers' sense of urgency is not sufficient to address a reader's legitimate complaint that in reading a book they did not also choose to attend a sermon.What can environmental writers learn from Indigenous humor? For example, what can Thomas King, Sherman Alexie, Simon Ortiz, or Louise Erdrich, to name only a few, teach us about how humor might be used, either as a means to promote social cohesion in a time of great environmental loss or as a form of resistance to a dominant culture whose value system threatens both environmental health and native communities? While I have no firm response, I suspect the answer may be rooted in Indigenous peoples' deep understanding of the value of humor to survivance—the need to preserve not only life but also culture and identity in the face of an existential crisis, whether that crisis is cultural genocide or global climate change.What does the new trickster look like? As Panda rightly points out, the trickster is a figure of fluidity and irreverence. Or, as Lewis Hyde wrote in Trickster Makes This World, “Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.”10 But for all the discussion of the trickster within Native American literature, are there ways in which the trickster's energy or tactics are exportable to the larger environmental catastrophe in which we now find ourselves? What does Old Man Coyote look like in 2021, either at a climate rally or in the pages of our work as environmental writers?How many climate change deniers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?What are you talking about? This bulb is perfectly fine.Now that's dark humor.Regards,Michael P. BranchUniversity of Nevada, Reno