Ryan McMahon (comedian)

Ryan McMahon is an Anishinaabe comedian, podcaster and writer from the Couchiching First Nation. McMahon was born in Fort Frances, Ontario, the oldest of three siblings. McMahon was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He attended the University of Minnesota on a full hockey scholarship and graduated from the Second City Training Center.[1]



Comedy, Television and Writing Career

In July 2012 McMahon was included in the New Faces of the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal. He has worked in both Canada and the United States as a comedian. One of his comedic personae was Clarence Two Toes, "a Half Ojibway-Half Metis guy that struggles everyday on whether to listen to the 'brown guy' or the 'not quite brown guy' that lives in his head. Clarence Two Toes was featured on McMahon's 2011 album, Live in Red Lake, which he made available on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-want basis.[2] In 2012 he became the first Indigenous comedian to record a one-hour comedy special, UnReserved, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.[3]

He has since done other specials for the CBC, including Colonization Road, in which he travels across Ontario to expose the history of colonial settlement and Indigenous dispossession.[4]The program won the Yorkton Film Festival’s Golden Sheaf Award for Best Documentary – Historical/Biography, and was nominated for a 2018 Canadian Screen Award.[5]

In 2018, McMahon published his first book of short stories, The Great NDN Paradox, with Arsenal Pulp Press.

Podcasting

McMahon has been podcasting since 2008. His most popular show, Red Man Laughing, uses humor to tackle such subjects as settler colonialism and racism;[6] it included a season devoted entirely to the topic of Canadian reconciliation.[7] To sustain Red Man Laughing, which draws as many as 10,000 listeners, McMahon has worked toward a mixed subscriber and free-listener model.[8]

Interested in the affordability and grassroots appeal of podcasting, McMahon founded an Indigenous multimedia network, Indian and Cowboy. In its first year the network had hosted seven podcasts, including Metis in Space, featuring two Metis women discussing sci-fi; an Indigenous sports podcast called Indigenous Prime; and Think Indigenous,about Indigenous education.[9] In 2016, McMahon expanded his projects into Makoons Media, a multimedia company that aims to create content by and for Indigenous people worldwide.[10]

Additionally, McMahon has hosted podcasts for the media platform Canadaland. He hosted Thunder Bay, based on Toronto Star reporter Tanya Talaga's award-winning book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City, which investigated the deaths of seven Indigenous youths in Thunder Bay, Ontario.[11][12] [13][14]McMahon was also a writer and co-host of Canadaland's political podcast, The Commons.

Activism

McMahon has become increasingly outspoken about anti-Indigenous racism and violence in Canada, and has received increasing attention for his views. Researchers at the University of British Columbia who analyzed Twitter discussions of the Idle No More movement found that, at its peak (December 2012-January 2013), McMahon was the tenth most-retweeted celebrity, making him a powerful cultural influencer.[15] Since 2015 he has been an occasional columnist for Vice magazine, writing about Canadian-First Nations politics. In 2017 he publicly refused to attend celebrations of Canada's sesquicentennial.[16]

gollark: No, it's on the paper, presumably.
gollark: Ink cartridge sales maximizers?
gollark: Aren't search engines probably already trying to do that?
gollark: Seeing advertising is just unpleasant and bad.
gollark: Firefox on mobile has some extension support, so I use that.

References
  1. Carleton, Sean (March 22, 2016). "Changing the world with comedy". Canadian Dimension. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  2. "Ryan McMahon aka Clarence Two Toes' New Comedy Album". RPM: Revolutions per Minute. October 25, 2011.
  3. McMahon, Ryan (September 25, 2018). "Success". The Walrus. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  4. "Colonization Road". CBC Firsthand. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. June 17, 2019.
  5. "In the Media: Thunder Bay Podcast's Ryan McMahon Talks Canada's Reaction to the National Inquiry". Faculty Blog. University of Alberta. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  6. Brady, Miranda J.; Kelly, John M. H. (2017). We Interrupt This Program: Indigenous Media Tactics in Canadian Culture. UBC Press. p. 164. ISBN 978-0774835084.
  7. Simpson, Leanna Betasamosake (2017). As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. U of Minnesota P.
  8. Craig, Sean (January 6, 2017). "Indigenous media audiences are bigger than ever, but profits remain elusive". The Financial Post. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  9. Nair, Roshini (October 6, 2015). "rabble.ca". Media Revolution. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  10. Romaniuk, Colleen (November 6, 2019). "Indigenous media company aims to tell traditional stories". Northern Ontario Business. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  11. McIntosh, Emma (2018-02-15). "What's next for Canadaland's Thunder Bay podcast?". Ryerson Review of Journalism :: The Ryerson School of Journalism. Retrieved 2019-12-12.
  12. Patrick, Ryan (January 8, 2018). "Why Tanya Talaga wrote a book about the lives and deaths of 7 Indigenous students in Thunder Bay". CBC.
  13. Wilson, Kim. "Murder Bay: Investigations into the deaths of Indigenous youth". Canadian Dimension.
  14. "Chapter 2: Clowns". www.canadalandshow.com. Retrieved 2019-12-12.
  15. callison, candis; hermida, alfred (2015). "Dissent and Resonance: #IdleNoMore as an Emergent Ground". Canadian Journal of Communication. 40: 695–715.
  16. Lehmkuhl, Ursula; Tutschek, Elisabeth (2020). 150 Years of Canada: Grappling with Diversity since 1867. Waxman Verlag. p. 124. ISBN 9783830991243.

Further reading
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