Ryan McMahon: John Wayne Is Dead
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Ryan McMahon; groundbreaking Anishinaabe comedian, writer, producer, and creator of compelling media confronts the borders he has faced throughout his entire career. Borders that he was able to kick down in an effort to create a new space for a new narrative about Indigenous presence in today's popular culture as we know it.
Related Links
• Visit Ryan’s website at rmcomedy.com.
• Listen to Ryan’s podcast series Thunder Bay on Canada Land or on Apple Podcasts.
• Listen to Ryan’s podcast Red Man Laughing here or on Apple Podcasts.
• Check out and support Ryan’s member supported Indigenous podcast network Indian & Cowboy.
EPISODE CREDITS
Written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Luz Fleming. Original Music by Luz Fleming, James Ash, Jacob Bronstein, Sajato Jarrett. Executive Producer: Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Andy Cotton. Cover art and episode art by Andy Outis. Production assistance by Davis Lloyd.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Yard Tales – Ryan McMahon: John Wayne Is Dead
Luz Fleming:
What's up everybody, before we get started today I have a couple announcements to make first. I want to let you all know that we have some dope Yard Tales t-shirts available. Our distinct two color logo is now printed on black Gildan hammer t-shirts. 100% ring spun, cotton pre shrunk Jersey knit, modern classic fit means that not only do they look fly, but they are super comfortable and fitting. Available in all sizes, go to yardtales.live/shop to make an order, that's yardtales.live/shop.
I also wanted to let you all know that this is the last episode in season one of Yard Tales. It has been such a rewarding and incredible experience allowing us to meet and develop relationships with so many people we never would have been able to otherwise.
And your invaluable feedback and generous donations have truly kept this thing alive and made room for some of the most compelling stories I could ever imagine being a part of and be sure to keep us in your feed. We have so much more material to share through the process of putting this season together.
So keep a lookout for bonus episodes and announcements in the coming weeks. Thank you all for crossing into the yard with us. And now let's get to the show.
This episode contains strong language and mature subject matter. It may not be suitable for all ears.
What up, this is Luz Fleming, you have come to the place where we tell tales of the train and the bus yard, the tenement yard, and the prison yard. We detail close calls and chase stories. We dig into larger conversations about crossing boundaries, the other side of the tracks, borders, and forbidden space, whether to make big life changes to forward the artistic or professional practice, to escape peril or just for the sheer thrill of it.
Ryan McMahon:
And I made it to the last call back and I quit. I walked off and I walked off when they showed us our costumes, which were adorned with pink and red and yellow and green feathers and head dresses and loincloths. And I said, “Fuck this.” There's my limit. There's my boundary. That I'm not willing to cross.
Luz Fleming:
I couldn't be more excited that we have Ryan McMahon on the show today. He's a comedian and writer, a producer, and an all around maker of compelling media. He's been featured on CBC Radio One, CBCTV he's appeared in multiple comedy festivals, won awards for his documentary work and been involved in dozens of podcasts, including his own Red Man Laughing and Thunder Bay. Ryan is an unbending talent who stays true to his mission at all costs.
Sometimes crossing into the creative space and making it sustainable can be the biggest boundary many of us will ever face but even while fully inside that space, there continued to be borders that Ryan constantly found himself bumping up against that is until he broke them all down and created his own space within the world of entertainment and media.
So sit back and let Ryan McMahon tell you some of its very own Yard Tales.
Ryan McMahon (Stand Up Bit):
And what's really interesting is like land acknowledgements used to be enough, like that would blow my mind. When you would first heard those, you're like, “What is even happening?” When you hear prime minister Trudeau say we're going to decolonize the government I jerked off.
I was like, “Ahhhhh!” I don't even know why. And I'm sorry to the front row. Oh my God. There's an elder right here. I am so sorry. That was very rude. It's okay. She's like, I've done that too. It's fine. I know. I just, I, uh, I was so excited. I was confused and I didn't get fully hard. I can't look this way. I just gotta put my hat here to block the peripheral of the elder…
Ryan McMahon:
My name is Ryan McMahon. I'm an Anishinaabe comedian and writer, producer, media maker person originally from Treaty #3 territory in Northwestern, Ontario, born and raised in Fort Frances Ontario. My home community is Couchiching First Nation and I currently split time between Toronto and Winnipeg.
First and foremost, just want to start by saying thank you for making the space and a podcast series that talks about space and boundaries. I'm aware that you're sharing your space with me, so I appreciate it.
I guess, to start from the beginning, I would say that I come from a long line of survivors and my family story, like many Indigenous peoples family stories are stories of survival and perseverance. And I guess it wasn't until my grandparents started dying, where I realized just how tough they were and how tough they had it.
And ultimately put a lot of things into context for me. And coming from a family of survivors means that you have to be a survivor. It means that inherently, you have been given a set of tools that are trauma informed, hopefully not trauma steeped, but certainly trauma informed. And that, you know, you are going to experience the world a little bit differently than your friends group or, you're going to experience the world at least in a very unique way, relative to the people that you're probably going to find yourself with in your life, whether that be an intimate partner or coworkers or colleagues.
And when I realized that I came from a family of survivors, putting things into context was really important to me. And when I started putting history in the context, it allowed me to release my anger towards my family, towards my community, towards the world really. And that's when I realized that the borders or the boundaries or the limits that I had placed on myself were bullshit and that I deserve to live, that I deserve to be happy that I deserve to have a career that I deserve to have a family that I deserve to be free.
When I started to learn the story of my grandparents. Yeah. I was very young, you know, I knew we were Ojibwe. I just didn't know what that meant. I knew not everybody was and I didn't know that that meant what it did. In terms of like, you know, the social determinants of health and, you know, prosperity and everything else.
And I, you know, I took a, yeah, I took a great interest in my community from an early age. I wasn't raised in a, what you would call a traditional household. You know, we didn't practice ceremony. I didn't come from a long line of Powwow princesses or Powwow singers or anything. I didn't grow up going to the Powwow, but I grew up, you know, being able to hunt for the moose that fed the Powwow.
So I just grew up differently. I grew up with inherent sort of Anishinaabe values that my parents taught me without even knowing they're teaching me. There are things that I can articulate now, there are things that I've taught my daughters as a, as a father, but their particular stories. My grandparents has particular stories.
So three of my four grandparents are, are Anishinaabe. And my fourth grandparent, my dad's dad was a, a white man who committed suicide before I was born. So I didn't know him at all. The story of my grandparents. I knew generally growing up, but as I got older and as an adult, yeah. Two of my three grandparents told me their horror stories from residential schools and I carry their stories.
My dad's mom didn't, she got Alzheimer's when I was away at school. And I wasn't able to really talk to her much about her, her upbringing and her, her life that way. But we know where she's from. She's from Rainy River First Nation from Manitou Rapids First Nation. And we know where her family is and we've managed to put together her story without her voice.
And it's a beautiful story. And those stories aren't, you know, those stories aren't mine, but they are a part of me. And so, you know, when I talk about my love of home, when I talk about my love of Anishinaabe people, when I, when I placed myself in the context of my own community. It's their stories that ground me and my story ultimately is, you know, is mine to tell my experiences being what they are.
I understand that I carry my grandparent’s stories with me and that they're, they're a part of me. So what's interesting is that my understanding of those stories continues to evolve through time as I get older.
So when I think about my grandmother's story and her not raising her children and her being a residential school survivor, and her struggling to be a mom, my sympathy, my empathy, my compassion for her grows as I, you know, became a dad. And I understand how hard that would have been. And in turn that helps my thinking around my own relationship with my parents evolve and change, and I have more sympathy and understanding and compassion and empathy.
So these stories have been invaluable. For me finding a place to live in this world, finding a place for me to stand. And I think when you're young and you're Indigenous, it's really hard to understand that you do have a place to stand here on this earth. You belong here. There's a word in the Ojibwe language called gashkibijigan, but gashkibijigan is the word that we use for bundle or gifts.
And we believe that every person on earth, Indigenous or not, is given gashkibijigan and your particular gashkibijigan is your hopes, your dreams, your likes, your dislikes, your wins, your losses.
And the secret to life, if ever there was one is to share your gashkibijigan is how you give away your, your, your gashkibijigan, your bundles. And for a lot of settler folks, it's kind of counter intuitive, right? What a lot of Western folks do is save and RRSP’s and they put away all their pennies and they collect and they hoard, but for us Anishinaabe people, the secret to life, the secret to wealth, the secret to happiness really is to give away, gashkibijigan. And the things that you get, you give you give back, you give way. And so for me, like realizing what, what is in my bundle, our stories and songs and all the hopes and dreams that I have.
And, and to give them away as to, to share parts of my grandparents' stories, you know, their experiences to help other people collect their gashkibijigan. So that for me is a really important pieces is what we, what we give to each other.
And Lee Maracle, the late great Lee Maracle, taught me about that specifically around reconciliation, back in, back in 2013 during Idle No More, she pulled me aside. We were having. She said, I need to talk to you because I'm really mad at you. And she sat me down at a table and she told me I was being very dangerous with my words.
At that time, I was on the CBC, The National, I was doing national radio with the very basic burn it all down sort of discourse. She said, you know, you're being really dangerous. You work with young people. You're rallying up young people. You're firing up young people. She said, but you know, the truth is, is you're not going to face the violence that is going to come If these young people carry out what you're saying. No one's going to stop you in a mall and try to punch you out. You're six feet tall, 280 pounds. No one's going to do that. But people that will face that violence are young Indigenous people, young Indigenous women, young two spirited people. And so you're being irresponsible with your words.
You have to be careful. With your words and what you hand off to other people. Cause you can never take those words back. You have to be very careful what you give to other people through your words. And, and it's a really important thing she taught me. And and I think about that in relation to gashkibijigan, because you know, when we're thinking about the types of things that we're offering people, we have to be very careful.
We have to be aware of what they're even asking for. Are they asking for help? Are they asking for something? And if they are, what is it? And can I give it to them? Do I have something to share? And so the question of, gashkibijigan and how we build and strengthen our communities together is really an interesting one for me today in 2021.
And so the project for me through my work today is imagined through the language of liberation. Like, I will not stop talking about Anishinaabe nationhood and the liberation of, of my peoples until we are free in our homelands. And so growing up, you know coming from a long line of survivors, I grew up with alcoholic parents, drug addicted parents who, you know, for the first number of years in my life were living that life.
And there was a lot of trauma around, there was a lot of, a lot of everything. There were pieces of everything around me, but just pieces. And I couldn't understand the pieces that were were around me. And sometimes those pieces were pieces of stories. Sometimes those were pieces of broken plates that had been thrown the night before.
Sometimes those were leftover food scraps from, from the party from the night before, but there were pieces of things around me all the time. And when you were a kid that grows up in a household like that, you're left to pick up the pieces, literally and metaphorically. And from as early as I can remember thinking about those pieces and thinking about, you know, how it is that I got here was a, it was a confusing thing to think about why your family's fucked up, why, you know, why some people in your family don't talk to each other.
Why some people in your family can't stand each other. Don't love each other.
Colonization is not just a poison. You know, I hear people really softening the edges of colonization these days, you know, and use a lot of different words to describe it. But it is, it is like drinking a pint glass of toxic sludge, but the sludge doesn't kill you. The sludge just stays in your system and slowly eats, eats at you slowly, slowly kills you through time.
And I was very young when I decided that I wanted to live, that I wanted things to be different for me and my family. And I should say right off the jump, like to my parents full credit. And they are my absolute heroes in my life. They got clean and they got sober and they changed their lives and ultimately our lives forever by doing so.
And I thank them every day for that. But the first, the first seven or eight years of my life were, were not great in that way. But I, I did decide that I wanted to live and I decided that I was going to do things to make sure that I was going to be okay.
It was around that age where, you know, I discovered Saturday Night Live. I discovered comedy and I think my parents went away. I can't remember if they went away to treatment or if they went to an Alcoholics Anonymous conference or a roundup, they used to call them a roundup and AA roundups would happen all around, I suppose, in the world.
But specifically in our region when they would happen, people in recovery would travel to go hear the speaker. And the speaker was the main event that would happen on the Saturday night and then there would be a dance or a dry social. And my parents used to go to them to stay sober because it was their social group and it was their, their peers and other people staying sober so.
And so I can't remember if they went to an, AA Roundup or if they're in treatment, but I went, I was at my aunt's house and she was having a party and probably should have been in treatment herself.
But on TV was Eddie Murphy “Delirious” and I remember this magnificent black man and red leather telling these jokes that I didn't understand jokes that by the way, in 2021 don't hold up.
But I remember looking around being a young kid and looking at the adults faces and being aware that no one was fighting, that there was alcohol, you know, sort of loud behavior and a party, but that no one was fighting. And I remember doing the math on that. I remember thinking about that thinking goddammit, whatever this guy is doing is absolutely magical.
And I would be lying to you if I were to say to you that that's when I fell in love with stand up comedy. And that's why I do stand up comedy now that that would be bullshit. But to say that that was probably the first time in my life, where I realized the power of humor and where I realized that comedy could be a bridge to something better, I wouldn't be lying, because I did, that was the moment where I realized that whatever this was was powerful.
You know, when I was in, I think grade five or six, I went out for the school play and I never looked back through grade 7, 8, 9, 10, all through high school. I just wanted to do theater. I, I, as soon as I got to high school, I met this hippie named Willa Tomczak. She was my high school drama teacher. And she told me in ninth grade that I was really good at this and she said you could probably do something if you work hard. And I didn't have a plan. I didn't excel at school. I didn't like math or science. I wasn't good at school. I kind of just always floated through, but when she said that I could probably do something with my life, I listened.
And I was an athlete, I played hockey at a very high level. I went to school on a hockey scholarship after high school. And, but I wasn't good enough for the NHL. I didn't like to do pushups and I couldn't run. So I knew that wasn't in the cards for me. And so for me, storytelling and theater and comedy and being a creative person, was it, that was all I ever wanted to do.
And having someone tell you that they believe in you from an early age, broke all of the boundaries, all of the borders, all of the limits that I had set for myself. I grew up in Northwestern, Ontario in a small community called Fort Frances Ontario. My first nation is Couchiching First Nation. Neither of my parents finished high school, you know, by all sort of social measure.
I probably shouldn't have made it out of that town. Like a lot of my friends didn't and you know, I'm in my early forties now, but at that time when I was in high school, you know, the expectation was, was that you were just going to finish high school and work in the mill, like your dad did.
And a lot of my friends did do that, but by the early two thousands, the writing was on the wall and, you know, the mill was going to shut down and forestry and Canada was on the brink of collapse and we had reached the limits on whacking down trees in Northwestern, Ontario. And at that time, people blamed Steve Jobs and Apple and the iPad and the internet.
And no one's going to read newspapers anymore and as mills slowly closed, I watched my friends lose their livelihoods and their hopes and dreams, whatever they were. And I finished university and I moved to Toronto and I started chasing my dreams back in 1999 and from there just didn't look back, but realized very quickly that the industry had a set of borders and boundaries and limits put on me.
And that was, you know, visually in a visual medium, you know, I don't look like the Indian they cast and Crime Stoppers commercials. You know, I look more like the white cop that beats them at the end of the commercials.
And I was in an audition one time with Nathaniel Arcand, Adam Beach, and Lorne Cardinal and all these beautiful brown men. And I was just like, “What the fuck am I doing here?” I am uncastable in this room. I'm chubby. I look white. They will never throw me on the back of a horse in a loincloth, like, that's not going to happen.
I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy got caught in some duct tape, in a loincloth, you know, it's not a good look. So I just realized that that border, that limit, that boundary, I reached very early in my career. I think I was, I wasn't even 22 years old yet. When I, when I quit, I had a manager, I had an agent, I was in things I was making money, but I was being sent out for auditions.
Like Last Of The Mohicans, the musical, which was going to be an off-Broadway play in New York City. You know, we're talking the early 2000’s at the time. I think I was being, you know, we're being offered somewhere around $3,000 a week to live in New York City for free. To do eight shows a week.
That was big money for me. And I made it to the last call back and I quit. I walked off and I walked off when they showed us our costumes, which were adorned with pink and red and yellow and green feathers and head dresses and loincloths. And I said, “Fuck this.” There's my limit. There's my boundary that I'm not willing to cross.
I called my agent on a payphone and I just said, “I’m walking off the project and I'm not going to do it.” She said, “You're going to fucking do it and you're going to go back in there and apologize to the director and the producers and you’re going to know your place, and you're going to go do that.” And what I heard her say, what she didn't say, but what I heard her say very clearly was you're going to go in there and you're going to dance Indian.
And that's what the role was. It was. I was getting the role because I could Powwow dance because I could Powwow sing because I could act. And I was being put in my place by the system I was being put in place by the expectations of the industry on Indigenous people. And it's interesting to be talking to you in 2021 about this, because we're, we're on this new chapter of our relationship with the industry.
And that new chapter is one that is like, allegedly has more room for us, right. For Indigenous stories, writers, producers, directors. We have successful products out there like Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls. And there are others that are being made now. So this idea of representation back to the early two thousands was one that's been at the front of my mind, my entire career.
And I just told my agent, “That's not happening, not going back in there and you're fired.” And so at the age of 22, I just quit. I told my agent, my management, that I wasn't going to go back to that kind of work. And that I'd figured out a different way.
And I did. And at that time I was, I had just started the Second City Conservatory. I was taking classes there and I started writing and, and I was really enjoying writing, using my own words, articulating myself in in ways that I thought were funny and political and interesting. Ways that I'd not seen reflected In a live theater in the work that I wanted to do before.
And that broke open a whole new world to me. And I felt like when I started writing the things I thought. That I'd entered a brand new space. I'd entered a brand new, like a brand new territory. You know, John Wayne built Hollywood with this idea of the Wild West being, you know, undiscovered, cowboys and Indians.
And what it felt like when I picked up the pen and started writing was that I was doing the same thing. I was discovering this new unchartered land, but it was, it was being done through Indians and cowboys, not cowboys and Indians. And so I wrote down on a piece of paper back then “John Wayne is dead” and it's in a notebook and the notebooks in my office.
And that for me, was sort of the, the metaphor allegory that I was kind of using on my own behalf for myself. Sounds cool on a t-shirt and probably sell stickers or whatever, but it was the motivating factor for me that, that I didn't fit in the industry that I had reached my limits inside of it. That I had successfully pitched projects like sitcoms and other things where the main character was a young native person and casting people.
And producers said, well, you know, we would get someone else to play that role. And I was like, motherfucker, I wrote this for myself. I'm an actor. I wrote this for me to star in, but I was never seen that way. And so I had to reimagine the work and I had to reimagine my place in the work to create a space for myself to create territory for myself.
And it was easy because it turns out a lot of people think like me, a lot of people look like me. A lot of people have had these experiences and I want to be clear the racism and the type of discrimination and things that I experienced inside the work at that time. Do not compare to the types of real racism that, that brown and black folks face.
And so I am certainly not trying to compare the two or even draw a line between the two, but to say that my experience inside that space was was very specific and, and violent and, and not, not a space that I wanted to stay in. And so I just started writing and I just wanted to know what I thought and what I had to say. While at Second City I was pitching sketches.
I was, I was, you know, we're getting ready for the grad show in the conservatory. I was really eager to get my audition with the national touring company and the main stage under my belt, I had showcased for Saturday Night Live through the NBC diversity program in 2002, I was ready to take the next step forward in my career.
And I remember in our conservatory grad class, we were pitching sketches. And one of the sketches that I was pitching over and over and over again was was this sketch about getting the prime minister into a sweat lodge as a way to get our land back. And basically the sketch would be done in an all black theater.
It's called the blackout and a blackout scene is done in black. So all the audience hears are voices. And I had this, I had this string of sketches that I wrote that I thought were hilarious. And by the end of the show, Jean Chrétien, would've given Indigenous people, their land back, and nobody thought it was funny and worse than that.
And not just that, they not think it was funny. They didn't understand the premise at all. Why getting land back, you know, what that meant, you know what why Jean Chrétien and the sweat lodge is funny. They, they had no context. They didn't know what a sweat lodge was. Nevermind. Never been in one. And I suppose this is a bit of a weird flex, but yeah, I was talking about land back in 2002, like you know, through sketch comedy and that sketch didn't make our grad show needless to say, but I was all alone.
You know, I was all alone with these, these funny people. I was exactly where I, I couldn't, I couldn't imagine it me. Being from the middle of the bush, growing up on my grandmother's trap lines from Northwestern, Ontario, and Treaty #3 small town of 6,000 people could find their way to the place where John Candy, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara, where were all these, these giants got started and I was there.
And then when I got there realized that I didn't belong there, that there was no space for someone like me there. And I was told over and over and over again, just write about something else. Stay away from the politics and I thought, well, yeah. Okay. I do. And I can, and I do, but I can only see and experience the world the way I do.
I wake up every day Anishinaabe I hear the news, read the paper to experience the world as an Anishinaabe person does. So I can't separate my experiences from my art. And I wonder if you tell lesbian comics to not be lesbians and talk about being lesbians or Chinese comics to not talk about being Chinese, like I, so I was instantly aware that like an Indigenous perspective in the mainstream comedy space was not, was not one that fit.
I had reached the border, line. And here's the thing about working in the mainstream is you'll be allowed in there as an Indigenous person. As long as white people are comfortable, I'm allowed just about anywhere because I'm good at what I do. I've had a long career, I've been moderately successful at some things sometimes.
And I can get meetings with top television executives, with streamers, with HBO. I can, I can call these people to get meetings, but those meetings will only go well If the people that are running the meetings remain comfortable, and this has happened to me over and over and over again through my career is like, you'll be welcomed to the party, but you may not be sitting at the main table.
You'll be welcome at the party, but you may not be served an entree.
A bunch of people came before me and they kicked open doors or tried to kick open doors so that we could be here. And I've done that for the people coming behind me. And those people will hopefully do that for those coming behind them. That's the responsibility piece that I think we as Indigenous creatives understand that piece very clearly.
But the success of today is only happening because of those that came before me and those that came before them. So this is all of a piece. This is all an extension of the same thing, and this is why we have to hold the line, right. This is why we have to continue to expand the limits of the industry and the limits of the stories that people accept.
This is why we have to continue to push forward to make space because their understanding of us is insufficient and incomplete. It just won't do. John Wayne is dead. So we have to continue to tell better stories and we have to continue to push against those tropes and those narratives. Hollywood was built by John Wayne.
Hollywood was built by John Wayne and cowboys and Indian movies. Hollywood was built by killing Indians. So. We have to have a responsibility in the rebuilding of our own lives to counter against all that. And that's, that's what we're doing.
Luz Fleming:
What's up everybody. This is Luz, the producer of Yard Tales. I want to take a minute to thank you for all of your incredibly generous donations and to ask for your continued support. This is independent media. If that's something you love, please help me to keep making this show and providing it to you for free, by continuing to donate to Yard Tales, a single dollar helps, but if even a small percentage of listeners give the price of one of those fancy coffees, I know I love to drink every day, well, you get the idea…
Just go to yardtales.live/donate and click on the button that says “Donate Now”, that's yardtales.live/donate. And don't forget you can now order your very own stupid dope Yard Tales t-shirt, find it at yardtales.live/shop. Thanks again for all of your generous support. And now let's get back to Ryan's undying pursuit to create his own space in the world of creative media.
Ryan McMahon:
Around that time in 2002, 2003, I just committed to just continue writing. I became a dad in the summer of 2003. I stopped performing. I worked a job and ended up leaving Toronto in 2006. Moved to Winnipeg to raise my family. I taught theater at the Manitoba Theater For Young People in the evenings, but stayed home as a stay at home dad in the day.
And I thought that that was going to be it. So in 2008, I enrolled in law school and I bought a laptop and I was going to just do that. And one night I was doing the readings required for a class and I opened up the laptop to write a paper. And I, I discovered this button, this program called Garageband inside of Garageband.
There was this button, this, this purple button. It was podcast. You could hit this purple thing and this audio meter would pop up. And this little audio midi software opened up and I could see as the television played in the background, I could see the audio meter kind of jumping. And I thought, “What the fuck, something's being recorded here?”
So I tapped on the laptop to try to find the microphone. And that night I created a podcast. It was 2008. It was before really it was before Apple even had a podcast directory back then you had to upload each episode manually and go to five different links to create an RSS feed and podcasting wasn't quite a thing yet, but I created something called the Clarence Two Toes Radio Show.
Clarence Two Toes:
As I walked into that fair I could see my group of friends standing there. They're all laughing, having a good time. I saw my girlfriend Lexus standing there, but I look closer. She was holding her cousin's hand. His name was Chevy. His real name was Chevrolet. Anyway, I could see he had fresh hickeys on his neck and she was chewing his gum…
Ryan McMahon:
And it was basically a fictional radio show taking place in a fictional community with a character named Clarence who would just do community news and sports. He would read classifieds. He would rant and rave, and it was a chance for me to use, to use this writing in this material. And I would do it when my daughters were asleep.
I would do it until five in the morning, teach myself how to edit, how to, how to cut for comedy, how to make things funny, drop in sound effects, design sound music, podcast artwork. I taught myself graphic design. Like I just really studied on how to do things independently, how to do things for myself.
Because I didn't give a fuck about what other native actors were doing or the TV shows they were auditioning for. I had no interest. I had worked with everyone I'd already wanted to work with in the likes of Tantoo Cardinal, Billy Merasty, Lorne Cardinal. I, I, I came up in Toronto, so I'd met all my heroes already.
I knew what they were about and I knew what they were doing. And I didn't want a piece of anything they were doing. I wanted to do something that had never been done before because there was so much to do. And rather than get stuck on bingo and bannock jokes, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to push past that because my, my own experiences were so different than my colleagues.
I didn't think they needed another voice in that space.
So I just, I kept, I kept writing and I made this podcast series and it kinda went viral. I would upload it to Myspace and in the earliest days of Facebook, I would put it there as well. And then somebody found it and they offered me this volunteer radio job at a radio station called NCI FM in Manitoba, it's Manitoba's Indigenous radio station. It's heard all over the province.
And I would, I would host as Clarence Two Toes, I hosted this show called “Friends On Friday”, which is a three hour request show where from six o'clock, till nine o'clock on Friday nights, I would talk to the province, take their calls, play their, their music. And Clarence would just, he’d just fight with people and shit on people and fuck with people.
And it was the most fun I've ever had up to that point in my career. But what I didn't know is that I was just creating new space. I was creating a character and a comedic voice that had never been done before in Indian country. It was political, it was angry, it was gentle. It was kind, it was heavily, heavily faulted and biased, but it was honest and it came from a place of love.
I never exploited Indigenous people's weaknesses through my comedy. I can go back on every second of work that I've ever created through that character. And I would invite anyone to do it. I never told jokes at our own expense. You know, it was a way for me to radically fight for our communities and doing that as a stay-at-home dad through the middle of the night on a laptop that I was supposed to be using to go to law school really just further taught me that if I was going to do something in this form, if I was going to do something in comedy, I would have to do it myself.
And so I did. And, and, and by 2010 Clarence Two Toes, and what I was doing in comedy was too hard to ignore because it got too big. And so the CBC came knocking and that's when I did my first comedy special. I was invited with a host of other native comics to do a recording for CBC television, for a welcome to Turtle Island Too.
Announcer:
It’s the Alberta comedy spectacular! Tonight Turtle Island Too! Ryan McMahon!
Ryan McMahon (on TV Show “Turtle Island Too”):
And they say, I'm lucky. Oh, you're lucky that that fair skin you've never experienced racism. You're so lucky. To that I just say, “Nuh-uh” It's not fun for me at the Powwow. Okay, in my regalia, at my drum, all weekend, people walking by kicking my chair, damn hippies.
Ryan McMahon:
As the story goes, I was a young guy that no one had heard of and I stole the show. Like I just went in there with 20 minutes of really good material. And the rest was history. I've never not worked since then. And because I started this career in 1999, I was with a comedy troupe called Tonto’s Nephews back in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.
And Tonto’s Nephews was an all native sketch and improv comedy troupe. We had a development deal with CBC in the early two 2000s. And to this day in 2021, there hasn't been a deal like it. Yeah. Like I've been around this space for a long time. And so I feel responsible for it in some ways I feel like the grumpy uncle that needs to take care of that space because that space is sacred.
So many people have worked so hard for this space. That we have to nurture it and continue to mentor people in it and continue to push boundaries and continue to let the space be redefined. And it continually is, right. Clarence Two Toes had its time. Tonia Jo Hall had her time. The 1491’s had their time. Tito Ybarra had his time, Charlie Hill had his time, Don Burnstick had his time. There's this, this now there's there's Paul Rabliauskas. Now there's Tik Tok stars that are funny. Like this space is a, is a, is a sacred space.
In the Ojibwe language, baapi'idiwag is the word we use for, for laughing to laugh. And that laughing space is a, is a space that Indigenous people can return to when they need to be filled up, when their spirit needs to be filled up. And we hold that space and we hold that line for people because a laughter is medicine.
It has gotten us through some hard times B, it feels good to laugh. When you come from a marginalized community, then it builds camaraderie with people to laugh, but C, most importantly, and the thing that almost nobody says is it's inherent in our worldview. Laughter and teasing and humor is baked into our creation story.
It's baked into our ceremonies, it's baked into our songs, our dance. We are laughter as much as we are stardust and as much as we are love, we are laughter as well. So keeping that space sacred and I don't mean sacred in the prayerful or the religious way. I mean, in a way that it is an all inclusive space, it is a respectful space.
It is a space of love, the space of, of healing. It's a space of failure. It is a space that does not have expectations put on it and keeping it as such means that to me, we will continue to build, you know, better futures together in the same way as I saw Eddie Murphy wearing his tight red pants tell jokes and I may, may was able to connect laughter to happiness, at least in the moment those same connections can be made in baapi'idiwag in the laughter space is that as long as we keep laughter in our lives and keep laughter central to what we do, you know, it will be okay
For me the work of using ideas and philosophy and politics and the social responsibility question, the political responsibility question in front of us today, using all of that, to confuse people in their own sets of ideologies and principles and biases. Using that to twist people up and then let them spin out.
It's a great privilege and it's a great responsibility
Through this work I think storytelling is the revolution. I don't give a shit what color the prime minister's underwear is. If the prime minister is with the green party or the orange guys or the red guys, or the blue guys, I don't care. Politics are not going to save us, stories will, and we become the stories we tell ourselves.
And I just think that our best stories have yet to be told. And I think that 30 or 40 years from now, they're going to look back on this time and then they're going to write books about it. And we are living through a change we are living through an awakening of sorts, and I think about, you know, my dear friend and mentor Lee Maracle, who just walked on a, from this physical earth walk into the spirit world to join her ancestors.
And I just think about how many times Lee told me that story, story will save the people, story will save us. The words, focus on the words. The way you use words, be careful what we give each other. Be careful what we hand off to each other, because we can never take it back. And so where we are thinking about territory and boundaries and borders, it's the words that will continue to push through the boundaries, the borders, the territories that we set for ourselves and each other.
And it's the new ideas. It's the new way we articulate old ideas that we'll continue to reset those borders and those boundaries and those territories that will continue to create new territory, a shared territory, a peaceful territory, a good and just territory for all of us,
I've gone through a number of different sort of iterations on kind of my own sort of practice with comedy and standup comedy and how I use comedy as a weapon for change and where I am now, as I understand that my responsibility, I think, and the privilege that I have to talk into an amplified stick to a bunch of strangers in a dark room who've paid money to hear me means that I do have a responsibility to take care of the audience.
And I have an interest in finding out where the common ground is. And so building that new shared territory where we imagine better, and then we build better together is a particular interest today in 2021, in a time where the climate is collapsing, in a time where a global pandemic has brought our most vulnerable people, seniors, disabled people, people of color, Indigenous people have brought them to the brink of collapse in their own communities. Now is a time where I think we should be using our words, our art to try to bring people together. So I'm really encouraged by thinking about the new territory we can build, you know, going forward and really encouraged by the possibility that we become the stories we tell ourselves.
And if we tell better stories, we'll be better people. But if we continue to tell what I call the settler myth here in Canada, the story of Joe and Janet Canada, if we continue to tell that story in 2021, on a go-forward basis, we're really fucked. But if we tell ourselves better stories, hopefully we become the stories we tell ourselves and that for me is us at our best is sharing space, listening and learning from each other.
I talk about colonization a lot in my work and what I think is important to reflect on is that colonialism has hurt us all, not just people of color, not just Indigenous people. It's robbed us all have a better life. We're all worse off for it. We are all poorer for it. And if we agree on that and we can, and we don't have to, but if we, if we, if we were to agree on that, then therefore decolonization is an all of us project.
Yet we think about decolonization as an Indigenous project, right. That the decolonization meets, you know, us reconnecting with our home territories and protecting waters and learning our languages and everything else. Well, what is the other half of this equation? You know, the other half of it is that we have to acknowledge that things have changed in our homelands and our home territories are forever.
We're never going back to the way things were and so if we are going to decolonize our territories and rethink these borders and these boundaries and these limits, that's an all of us project and placing yourself inside of the decolonization project, when perhaps you've benefited from it is really difficult and it's going to be not in our lifetime, it's going to be a millennia of work that it's going to take to answer these, these questions, but we have the understanding, we have the knowledge and we're also close enough to it right now that we can, we can do this work. We can, we can meaningfully engage in this work.
A few years ago, I met a man who was 117 years old and I shook his hand and I listened to him speak and he was talking about so, 117 means when I met him, I think he was born in 1899. So this would have been five years ago. He was born in 1899. He was raised, when he was born, his great-grandfather was alive.
So I guess we could have gone back to like that man would have been born in the early 1800’s and the man that I met grew up listening to stories about his great, great, great, great grandfather. So now we're going back to like the late 1600s, early 1700s of like family stories, oral histories that are connected to something.
And we might suppose just to be generous. Well, let's go back to say that those stories connect to 100 or 200 years prior to that. So now we're in the 1400s now we're talking about the days of Columbus, perhaps where these family stories are very much alive in the minds of Indigenous people in their communities.
This was five or six years ago I heard this man tell these stories. And so when we think about like decolonization and the re-imagining of territory and space, and this place called Canada, the information's there. We know the stories are there. We just have to be willing to tell them we have to be willing to listen to them.
And then we have to be willing to respond to them. And that is this country's greatest challenge, is doing those three things, hearing those stories, listening to them, and then responding to them. But we'll get there. I know we'll get there.
I'll share one more story. It's a story that we call “The Basket Full Of Stars”.
Anishinaabe people believe that when we are born, when we agree to come on this physical earth walk, we are a star people. And that we float around the stars with the ancestors as spirits, and when called upon for our time to have our earth walk creator calls you forward, and they present you this birchbark basket full of stars.
And what we believe is that when you look down into that basket as a spirit, you're shown all of the things that are going to happen to you in your life. All the good, the bad, the wins, the losses, the love, the hurt, the pain, the victories, and you see it for what it is in its totality. And you look down and the creator says, “Well, this is what you're going down there for and this is what you have to agree to and if you can agree to all that you can go.”
And if that spirit agrees, then they journey down for four days down from the stars into this physical earth world. And when they come, they're greeted by the parents that they find. And what we believe is that, you know, through time, you learn to walk with your, gashkibijigan, your bundle, your gifts, your hopes, your dreams, your talents, your ideas, and that your gashkibijigan starts to show you through time what is inside of that basket full of stars. You're reminded of the basket full of stars during your earth walk and maybe some people call it deja vu. People say, oh, you know, man, I'm having deja vu.
Wait a minute. Is this happened before I'm having deja vu? Hey man, I just met you, but I'm having deja vu. Is that weird? Well, Anishinaabe people, we don't believe in deja vu, we believe in the basket full of stars. And that when you find yourself in a place where you recognize the environment or the people, the sounds, the sights, the smells that you're not having deja vu, but instead you're exactly where you're supposed to be.
That you've already seen this in the basket full of stars and that you're on the right path and on my journey, I recognize people in places and things all the time. And I'm inspired by the chance to think about that basket full of stars in my own journey for better or worse wins, losses, victories, loves and think about how, you know, I'm supposed to be doing this work.
And I feel inspired to do this work as long as I continue to believe in my gashkibijigan, my, my bundle and that that basket full of stars is what's taken care of this ride. So wherever it goes, it goes, I've already agreed to it. And there's no point in trying to try to put my hands on the wheel, it's already happening.
So there's no deja vu, and there's no coincidence. We've agreed to this earth walk as weird as it is. It’s probably a video game of some sort I'm not high and we don't have to get into the simulation theory or any of that bullshit, but I definitely believe we've agreed to all of this and we are where we're supposed to be.
Luz Fleming:
Huge thanks to Ryan for coming on the show today.
The interview for this episode of Yard Tales took place on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, the Wyandotte, the Haudenosaunee, and the Mississaugas, or Toronto. I recorded and produced the rest of this podcast on the unceded territory of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations, Vancouver, BC.
Thanks so much for joining us today. To follow what Ryan is up to go to rmcomedy.com or you can find him on Instagram and Twitter at RMComedy. Yard Tales is executive produced by Jacob Bronstein. Andy Outis is our design director, production assistance by Davis Lloyd. Original music and sound design by James Ash, myself, Jacob Bronstein, and Sajato Jarrett.
Shout out to Andy Cotton for the dope theme music. Thanks for letting me put a little remix on it for this show. If you like Yard Tales, be sure to follow on Apple and Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. Be sure to rate and review on Apple Podcasts to help point more listeners to the show. You can find more information, images and additional audio at yardtales.live and check us out on Instagram @yardtales and Facebook @yardtalespodcast.
If you want to leave feedback or reach out for any reason, send an email to info@yardtales.live.
Well, I just can't thank the Yard Tales team enough for helping to bring this show together. Jacob Bronstein, Andy Outis and Davis Lloyd have been on board since well before we even knew whether we were going to be able to make this thing work, thanks to Andy Cotton for the theme music, and thanks to everyone who generously contributed music to the show.
Thanks to James Ash for opening up your expansive sonic library to us. And the deepest gratitude goes to every single guest who shared their detailed and often sensitive stories with us. But most of all, thanks to all of you for listening and being so generous with your feedback and support. Keep Yard Tales locked in your feed for bonus episodes and announcements about future releases.
You'll be hearing from us.