Indigenous comedy duo forms in B.C. out of community need for laughter – BC | 24CA News

Just a few “dirty old grannies,” is how Lilet and Soogah – or Bev Prince and Winnie Sam – describe their comedy duo.

The grannies are from Nak’azdli Whut’en First Nation close to Fort St. James, B.C. They grew up collectively, dwell two homes aside and say comedy kind of fell into their lap.

“We were just plain crazy to begin with, so once we dressed up, we even got worse and crazier,” stated Prince.

“We just laugh all the time,” provides Sam. “And then all of a sudden we’re Lilet and Soogah.”

The names – which means milk and sugar – got here out of their need to have conventional names. They had been at a potlach when a non-Indigenous individual was referred to as up and given a reputation.

“We were just sitting there like ‘Hey, how come she’s got a name?’” stated Sam. “Stubborn as we are, we were like ‘Well I want a name’ and that was it.”

Soon after the potlach, Lilet and Soogah entered a expertise competitors – they gained. They started getting invited to occasions and it ballooned from there.

But the rationale they acquired into comedy wasn’t only for leisure.

“We just wanted to make people laugh because we were struggling here in our community, there was so much death happening, and then COVID came,” stated Prince.

“We get messages from people that were probably at the worst time of their life kind of thing and like and they just send us a thank you cause we were there when they needed us,” provides Sam.

Indigenous individuals have a historical past of coping by way of comedy, a phrase you’ll hear typically is “laughter as medicine.” Linked to years of trauma by way of colonization – the reserve system, residential colleges and genocide, the 60s scoop, the kid welfare system, racism and a lot extra – Indigenous individuals have used humour for survival.

Not solely are there a plethora of Indigenous comedians — see Drew Hayden Taylor, Tim Fontaine, Howie Miller, Jana Schmieding, Dakota Hebert, Janelle Niles — to again this up, however there’s analysis too. PsychCentral revealed an article final yr about humour as a coping mechanism writing that it might probably “relieve the burden of stressful emotions” and “help to positively change your perspective of troubling circumstances.”

Inadvertently, that’s what Lilet and Soogah’s comedy does.

“(Our communities) have so much grief so when we do comedy and we get into it, me and Winnie will have so much belly laughs that we forget why we were sad,” stated Prince. “We just laugh all the time and it tends to take away from focusing on that grief.”

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Coping mechanism apart, comedy is a large a part of Prince and Sam’s lives. While one works on the native highschool and the opposite with youth, they’re in a position to make use of these abilities on the job.

But they might like to make comedy a full-time factor. They have taken their abilities on-line with Facebook and TikTok accounts – and hope sometime to get the eye of the Vancouver Canucks.

“We wanna make it to a Canucks game, dance in the aisles, throw our big panties around,” the duo stated.

“We’re always looking for grandpas. We used to be looking for uncles but now we’re past that age group. We’re not cougars anymore, we’re deaf leopards.”

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