In 1977, Charlie Hill became the first Native comedian to perform on a national TV broadcast – a groundbreaking performance in television and cultural history.
“It was a huge moment,” said Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, “when Charlie Hill went on national television and simply spoke like a human being… He changed the public perception about what a Native person is.”
Charlie Hill’s comedic approach to the Oneida story is part of a long lineage of storytellers and historians defying stereotypes that includes Oscar Archiquette, a young Oneida working construction when the Federal Writers’ Project came to Wisconsin in the 1935. Archiquette joined a local unit of the Writers’ Project that sought to preserve the Oneida language and histories by interviewing elders and transcribing their stories. That work – and its blend of activism, culture and disarming humor – inspired later Oneida historians such as Loretta Metoxen and Gordon McLester, and continues to inspire tribal historians today. {listen}