Joey Clift, an enrolled member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, grew up on the Tulalip Indian Reservation surrounded by people who understood Native history and culture.

Leaving the reservation, though, he got “the most wild questions”: Was he born in a tipi? (No, and his ancestors would have lived in longhouses anyway.) Did he have electricity? A lot of ideas about Native people, he realized, were stuck in the past — except the surprisingly common assumption that he could transform into a werewolf, like in the “Twilight” movies.

Now, Clift highlights Native culture through his work as a comedian, director and producer. His résumé includes shows like Netflix’s “Spirit Rangers” and Nickelodeon’s “Paw Patrol,” plus hilarious, touching and often viral digital shorts from his own “Gone Native” series.

He said he hopes his very irreverent and bighearted new book, “We’ve Been Here the Whole Time!” (out Oct. 6 from Andrews McMeel Publishing), is both a comedic catharsis for Native readers and a funny, accessible education for others, particularly at a time when history “counter to the American exceptionalism narrative” is being censored in U.S. institutions.

Clift spoke with The Seattle Times from his Los Angeles home about inspiration, representation and why he loves his tribe’s casino. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I understand you originally planned to be a weather forecaster.

I loved comedy TV shows growing up, things like “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “Conan O’Brien.” But because I didn’t see any Native American comedians on the TV shows that I liked, I didn’t think I was allowed to work in comedy. To me, being a small-market TV weather guy felt like the next best thing, an attainable way that I can get paid to make people laugh. I’ve got to give a shoutout to Seattle weather legend Steve Pool, who was a big inspiration for that, just seeing how fun he was on the air.

I went to the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at WSU in Pullman, and … fortunately, a bunch of my professors pulled me aside when I was about to graduate and take a news job in Post Falls, Idaho, and gave me the very obvious advice of, “Hey, it’s clear that comedy is the thing you actually want to do. Why don’t you just do that?”

Was it clear to you that you wanted to bring your culture into your comedy?

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I knew that I wanted to write and tell jokes for a living, but I didn’t really know how to manifest that. I wrote a lot of sketch comedy pieces at places like the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, tackling such important topics as “What if Spider-Man could rap?” and at a certain point, I started to notice that I was one of only a few Native comedians getting opportunities in mainstream comedy spaces. It made me hyperaware of seeing all these very funny Native comedians doing great work in Native spaces — powwow circuits, casino circuits — who were not necessarily getting opportunities in these big mainstream spaces.

I started small, just putting my tribal affiliation in my comedian bio, and that built up to me putting together the first all-Native comedy show in the history of the UCB Theatre in 2018. The show was a standing-room-only sellout, and it was a big hit. That was one of the many things that pushed me toward “It’s not just that I like telling jokes about my culture and Native people. It’s that it feeds my soul in a way that sketch comedy videos about Spider-Man rapping just don’t.”

I might have responded to some of the situations you write about in the book with anger instead of good humor.

Comedy and jokes are the prism with which I see the world. And I’ve learned … that comedy is one of the best tools that we have to give people to allow them to accept and take in information.

Was it challenging to approach these issues on a national level, or were some situations universal?

I am a member of one tribe. There are over 570 federally recognized tribes around the country, hundreds more at the state level, and the difference from one culture to another might be as big as the differences between the United Kingdom and Egypt. Additionally, I’m only one person. (But) while I was writing the book, I talked to a lot of other Native folks around the country … and through that process I learned a lot about the issues and challenges and celebrations and good and bad things that a lot of different tribes are going through. 

The issues that my tribe is experiencing might be different than the Pamunkey Tribe of the East Coast, or any of the tribes in Oklahoma, or anything like that, (but) we are all experiencing the larger umbrella of dealing with the ramifications of colonization and trying to maintain not just our history and culture but also making sure that we’re having a flourishing present and future. I like to think about it as, we’re not all fighting the same battles, but we’re all fighting in the same war.

Do you have favorite parts of the book?

I have a few chapters describing things like tribal enrollment and other complex Native issues that I think I boil down in a way that’s really easy to read.

I’m really proud of a chapter where I talk at length about my tribe’s casino. It’s called ilani, and it’s about 20 minutes north of Portland on I-5. I know that for a lot of people, tribal casinos are the stereotype of how they see Native culture. I have a chapter called “26 Reasons That My Tribe’s Casino Rules” that goes into silly reasons, like “Our bathrooms are really clean,” and “Our steakhouse is delicious.” But while doing that, I am also explaining the benefits that my tribe’s casino had to my tribe and our culture, and how my tribe fought for over 100 years for us to be federally recognized, which eventually led to us getting things like that — half promoting my tribe’s casino in a way that I think is very funny, and half expressing the love and pride that I and I think a lot of other Native folks have for the business ventures of our communities.