Oakland Comedian Jackie Keliiaa on Pain, Punchlines and Her ‘Good Medicine’

This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about resilient Californians, and what lessons they may have for the rest of us.

Oakland-based comedian Jackie Keliiaa has built a career turning identity and grief into humor that heals as much as it provokes. Raised in Hayward, Keliiaa draws inspiration — and material for her stand-up routines — from her Native American, Native Hawaiian, Portuguese and Italian heritage.

She has been featured in the book ‘We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native American Comedy’, appeared on Team Coco, voiced the character Bubble in Netflix’s Native animated series Spirit Rangers and co-created the all-Native comedy tour Good Medicine. The tour’s next show is Oct. 18 in San Francisco at the Strand Theater.

Keliiaa joined The California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha for a conversation on indigeneity, loss and the transformative power of laughter.

Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.

On fitting into a box

Everyone was confused [about my ethnic background]. A lot of people, especially when I was younger, thought I was Asian. When I got into middle school, a lot of people thought I was Latina because a lot of my friends were Mexican.

I always felt like I fit in, but it was usually because I fit into whatever box people thought I was, as opposed to me really feeling like all of my pieces were acknowledged and understood.

My family came over from Portugal, and they landed in Hayward, and they started an orchard. A lot of people don’t know this, but [some] Azorean-Portuguese — from the Azores islands — came to the Bay Area.

Growing up, I would do a lot of Portuguese traditions. I was a part of the Holy Ghost Festival, but then I would show up to the event and they wouldn’t assume that I was Portuguese — that question mark, I’ve always seen it on people’s faces. So those jokes are important to me because people have always tried to put me into a box.

I think when I was younger, I just remember being like, “God, I wish I was just one thing.” Now I’ve come to understand that my background is a superpower and it’s also something that I’m very proud of. I love being Portuguese. I love being Native. And now, I don’t feel like I have to choose.

On what her Native ancestors passed down

My grandparents are from Nevada, and they met at Stewart Indian Boarding School. Washoe and Paiute were the two main tribes that were at Stewart. I knew that it wasn’t great — the administration was trying to change who they were as Native people.

But my grandfather would say, “We had a roof over our head and we had three squares a day. For a kid growing up in Nevada during the Depression, that was more than anyone could ask for.” He talked about Stewart as this place that helped him survive.

But also, we didn’t get into the other things. As a kid, I knew, I’m not gonna ask beyond what they’re willing to tell me because there was a darkness to it. In boarding school, they’re tough on people, and that was passed on to us, too. So it has reverberated through all the generations.

The crazy thing people don’t understand about the boarding schools is that all the food was cooked by the kids, all the laundry was done by the kids, all the mowing, all the like yard work done by kids. It was this whole sort of environment that was built on the labor of young native children.

It’s a complicated relationship, and I do honor that my grandparents were very proud to have gone to Stewart. And then I also understand there were many things that I was not informed of.

On being Native and finding humor

Native people — we’re just inherently hilarious. Teasing is a way that we show our love and affection. It’s part of our culture, part of our community. It’s very much part of [our] DNA.

Even though all these dark things may have happened, there’s a lot of levity.

I went to Cal, did Native American studies and minored in city and regional planning. Then I went on to get my master’s in urban planning from Columbia. I always thought I’m gonna go work for the government because that’s what my family does. I didn’t even think of comedy as a life you can make a living off of.

One of my core memories that sort of helped me get to where I am in comedy is in 2005, when I was a student at UC Berkeley. It was Native American Heritage Month, and the graduate student program hosted a comedy night — Charlie Hill was the headliner.

Hill is the godfather of Native comedy. He was the first-ever Native comic to get a late-night set on The Richard Pryor Show. I got a chance to see him live. And it was so cool, it opened me up in a way that I was like, “I wanna do this.”

The joke [I wrote] about skiing in Tahoe and desecrating the sacred lands was a hard one because it really bums people out. But simultaneously, I think it needs to be said, because I’m the only person who can say this and have you think in a different perspective about, “I guess all land here is Native land, and there was a community here that this was important to, and now it’s my playground.”

Ultimately, as a comic, I do want people to think differently when they leave the show, and also know that there are modern Native people out here in this world. I feel every day I’m trying to combat this Hollywood spaghetti Western view of what Indian Country is.

On grief and getting on stage

When my mom passed, I was just kind of feeling like a husk. [That’s when] comedy found me. The worst possible thing that could happen to me happened, and all the fear of going up and bombing just went away. And then I went to my first ever open mic and I did okay.

I was 26 [that year, and] I had my first ever gig at the Native American Health Center [in San Francisco]. I performed for a crowd of like 250. I was only like a few months into stand-up, but to have the support from the Native community right from the jump was amazing.

On her tour, ‘Good Medicine”

Sometimes I’ll be performing and I’ll just be drawn to one person in the audience. I’ll find myself kind of returning to them. And then after the show, they’ll come up to me and share some personal story about a loss, or they’ll be like, “This is the first time I’ve laughed in a while.”

I know that that’s part of what I’m doing, and especially in this cold, hard world that is getting harder and scarier by the minute. It is so important to have comedy in our lives.

To be sitting with your loved ones and knocking your head back because you’re laughing so hard, that is a gift and not everybody gets that. I do understand that sometimes my role out there is to make people laugh, but also to give someone a moment, a break from it all.

It’s a two-way street because when I’m on stage, I am processing the world around me … I have learned how to give power back in moments that I may have not had it. It is the way that I can retell a story with perspective, agency, and power.

As a woman, as a person of color, as someone who’s experiencing this world from a Native perspective as well, and a city person, all these different intersections of my identity, there are so many times that the world wants to tell me no. And I use the stage to go, “Watch, I’m gonna do it.”

On critiquing the term resilience

I have to share a quote from one of my favorite authors, Tommy Orange: “And don’t make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived is no badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient?”

I don’t like resilient being used as a frame to discuss Native experience. I understand that resilience as a feature has been [there] throughout my entire life. So many of the losses or the failures have catapulted me into success. It’s so important to use those moments that didn’t work out the way you wanted to, to find something else.

A lot of comics have found comedy in really dark times. Comedy finds people, and they take these really gnarly moments in their lives and turn them into something that gives back not only to themselves but to the community around them. That in itself is an exercise in resilience.