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Just a couple of “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 near Fort St. James, B.C. They grew up together, live two houses apart and say comedy sort of fell into their lap.
“We were just plain crazy to begin with, so once we dressed up, we even got worse and crazier,” said Prince.
“We just laugh all the time,” adds Sam. “And then all of a sudden we’re Lilet and Soogah.”
The names – meaning milk and sugar – came out of their desire to have traditional names. They were at a potlach when a non-Indigenous person was called up and given a name.
“We were just sitting there like ‘Hey, how come she’s got a name?'” said 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 talent competition – they won. They began getting invited to events and it ballooned from there.
But the reason they got into comedy wasn’t just for entertainment.
“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,” said 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,” adds Sam.
Indigenous people have a history of coping through comedy, a phrase you’ll hear often is “laughter as medicine.” Linked to years of trauma through colonization – the reserve system, residential schools and genocide, the 60s scoop, the child welfare system, racism and so much more – Indigenous people have used humour for survival.
Not only are there a plethora of Indigenous comedians — see Drew Hayden Taylor, Tim Fontaine, Howie Miller, Jana Schmieding, Dakota Hebert, Janelle Niles — to back this up, but there’s research too. PsychCentral published an article last year about humour as a coping mechanism writing that it can “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,” said Prince. “We just laugh all the time and it tends to take away from focusing on that grief.”
Coping mechanism aside, comedy is a huge part of Prince and Sam’s lives. While one works at the local high school and the other with youth, they’re able to use those skills on the job.
But they would love to make comedy a full-time thing. They have taken their talents online with Facebook and TikTok accounts – and hope someday to get the attention of the Vancouver Canucks.
“We wanna make it to a Canucks game, dance in the aisles, throw our big panties around,” the duo said.
“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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