‎Watchlist This! Our February 2025 picks of the best new bubbling-under films • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

Multi-generational and diverse, the Native comedians are gay, straight, queer, polyamorous, shy and outrageous, and include self-described two-spirit “Rezbian” Janelle Niles (Black—Mi’kmaq). I jokingly asked Niles if she has copyrighted the word “Rezbian” yet, and she replied, “Actually, that word, apparently, was coined by Cherish Violet Blood in Toronto over twenty years ago” (props to my dear friend Cherish, who made a star turn in 2021’s Scarborough).

Niles continues: “Being two-spirit and being Indigiqueer are two completely different things. As a two-spirit person, I have an obligation to my communities; I heal through humor. I call myself binary because I have both have masculine and feminine spirits. Some people believe that being two-spirit just means you’re trans or just means you’re gay, but it’s more complex than that.”

I asked Keith Nahanee about finding the balance between raunch and respect, so as not to offend the aunties too much. “Well, I’ve grown up with Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, all of them, and they pushed it back,” he says. “Then, it wasn’t pushing the envelope—it was just comedy and doing the comedy scene. In today’s generation, a lot of it’s clean stuff, and on the reserve, it’s all raunchy. We just roast each other all the time, and there’s no hold bars.”

There are no reviews yet of Rez Comedy, so we’ll leave the last word to Nahanee, talking on the importance of Indigenous comedy. “As Indigenous people have large families, we go through a lot of deaths. It’s heavy on the heart. You just want to bring laughter so we can put that grief down for a bit… and be able to laugh.” Laughing through the tears—such are the days of our lives for Native people everywhere. LK