One of the segments on the Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour (the CBC radio program of Thomas King, Floyd Favel Starr, and Edna Rain) was “King’s Traditional Aboriginal Decorating Tips.” For this bit, the show’s hosts offer advice about how to ornament and arrange one’s home. The segment could be a mimicry of Western culture’s preoccupation with how a home looks. This fixation is evinced in the myriad shows, articles, and so on that ostensibly exist to provide helpful tips to people having trouble figuring out what to do with their living space.

An analysis of this segment might find that the three hosts are spoofing the consumer culture of the West. One could conclude that they’re mocking the presumption of homeownership and the privilege of having little more to worry about than the appearance of one’s abode. It’s also possible the hosts are satirizing the serious issue of displacement among First Nations peoples. Using humor, they’re drawing attention to the fact that many Canadians likely have homes where Indigenous homes once were.

Alternately, an analysis of King’s decorating tips could focus on how it’s a mimicry of Indigenous stereotypes. The tips include creating a smoke hole and stuffing an entire moose and hanging it on the wall. These ideas come across as silly. Their ridiculousness might be a satire on the seriously harmful tropes about Indigenous people that have emerged throughout Western societies like Canada.