After reporting for 10 years for news outlets like the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network and CBC Indigenous, Tim Fontaine had his fill. And more than a few things to get off his chest.

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“I’ve always wanted to be a creative writer,” Fontaine told The Tyee about his decision to quit reporting in 2017.

“I read Stephen King’s book On Writing, and it said just keep writing. And so that’s what I started doing. I started writing these stories I had in my head. Because all I had done was news for the past 10 years, I figured I would just write it as funny news stories.”

His creative writing exercises turned into Walking Eagle News, Fontaine’s self-described “humorous fake news site” written in the style of The Onion and The Beaverton, but “with an Indigenous twist.”

Walking Eagle runs the gamut from silly — a “new study” concludes Indigenous people are frequently studied — to biting social commentary — a Feb. 12 headline saying “Indigenous Peoples’ declare faith in Canada’s justice system dead at 151” in the wake of the not guilty verdict in the Colten Boushie trial.

Only online for four months, Walking Eagle’s Twitter account has already gained over 7,500 followers. On average, articles get 1,500 reads, 5,000 if they’re really popular, and the Patreon crowdfunding account brings in almost $900 a month for the site.

Not bad considering self-appointed Editor-in-Grand-Chief Fontaine is Walking Eagle’s sole contributor, writing in what spare time he has between his regular gig as an APTN documentary producer and, as of last month, the new host of their satirical news show, The Laughing Drum.

The Tyee spoke with Fontaine last week — before the jury reached its decision in the Colten Boushie case — about why he describes Waking Eagle as “fake news,” what people don’t find funny, and the healing powers of absurdist humour.

Tyee: Why do you call Walking Eagle fake news?

Tim Fontaine: It started getting this label as satire, and I think people expect me to stay true to that, and I don’t really want to. There’s certain things on there that are just kind of stupid, and I like it that way. They’re absurd stories, and not all of it has a point. Some of it is just stuff that I thought was funny. And that’s why I didn’t want to get stuck with the title of it being satire.

Was it the desire to be a creative writer that made you quit reporting to write fake news?

No, I think it was boredom and just wanting to do something else besides serious news. Serious news can really wear on you after so many years, and it certainly had on me. And I’d always threatened to leave… and I thought if I don’t do it, I’m never going to leave. And so, Walking Eagle is kind of a side effect of me leaving.

Who is Walking Eagle’s intended audience?

First, it’s Indigenous people, and then anyone else who wants to enjoy it can enjoy it. I think it’s written in such a way that the majority of it could be picked up by anybody, and obviously it is. I’ve got both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people reading it and understanding it. But ultimately it was initially for Indigenous people... here’s our humour coming through in this sort of fake news world. And I still think I write it that way.

It’s funny. When I first started writing it, I didn’t know who was going to like it. I thought maybe some Indigenous journalists would get a kick out of it. I didn’t realize that it would pick up. The whole thing has been a huge surprise for me that it’s taken off the way it has.

Who was the previous host of APTN’s The Laughing Drum?

Michael Hutchinson, who is actually the [APTN] news anchor as well. So his job was to get these comedians to talk about stuff that was happening in the news. And that was great, but I don’t think he could let go because he’s the anchor. So he’d come from a show talking about MMIW [missing and murdered Indigenous women] to suddenly joking about whatever. He was really hamstrung by that.

He did it quite well, but me being there, not being bound to journalistic laws and rules, I think, is much better because I can do a lot more. So that’s the big difference between the two. And it’s been fun so far. My season runs until May, and I’m going to try and do some crazy stuff.

You take on both colonial and Indigenous institutions. Do you find that people respond better to jokes about one over the other?

No, not necessarily. I get lots of messages from people saying you should poke fun at this or that. I don’t think one or the other has attracted more people.

The thing where people get touchy is when you start talking about race. When you start saying something is racist. Like, I’d written a story because I saw, I think it was a CTV panel where they had five white people talking about whether something was racist, and I thought this is just ridiculous. So, I wrote it as I saw it.

Of all the stories I’ve written, that was the one where I’ve gotten the most non-Indigenous people mad at me, saying you can’t do that. Actually, I can do whatever I want. It’s my site. So it doesn’t really bother me, it just shows you that race is a very sensitive topic. But I don’t shy away from it.

Are there any issues that are too sensitive?

MMIW, I find, is too sensitive and too confusing for people. I did do a joke once about the inquiry — it wasn’t making fun of the issue, it was this mess around the inquiry — and people were really confused by it. It was also probably because it was so new that a lot of people didn’t know that it was a humour site. [Note: Fontaine pulled the story and posted an apology on social media.]

It doesn’t matter how absurd I think the story is, there are people out there that believe it. You have to be very careful about that. So when it comes to MMIW, I don’t want to add to the confusion or discomfort of that group of people because they’ve suffered enough. That one is off-limits. I don't joke about that. There are certain things that are hard to joke about.

Have there been times you’ve been surprised to find you’ve pissed off Indigenous readers?

Yeah, people get pissed off about a lot of things. It doesn’t surprise me… and I accept that it’s part of the game.

There’s people that have misunderstood what it is, and I struggle with that, too, because… if you have to explain it to them, then it’s not that funny. But at the same time, the majority of people get where I’m coming from and get what it is that I’m poking fun at or the point I’m trying to make.

You’ve written jokes about the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and CBC Indigenous. How concerned are you that these might come back and bite you?

No, that doesn’t bother me at all. I’m still working at APTN now, and I’m not saying you guys are all a bunch of racists or all a bunch of idiots or something like that. A lot of it is just joking, and they get that. I honestly don’t know how CBC took that one that I wrote about them, but I still get called to get interviewed by them, so it’s obviously not slammed that door shut.

Do you have a favourite story?

There was one about two floor-walkers in Saskatchewan who collapsed after following each other for hours. And it came because there was all of these stories in the media about people being followed in stores, and I just thought it would be hilarious if two floor-walkers both misunderstood that the other was not a customer and just followed each other for hours. It still makes me laugh now when I think about it.

The other one is probably the one that is the most popular story on the site about how the Royal couple was going to be receiving an Indigenous person as a gift. And people still believe that’s a real story.

What or who are your influences?

The usual. For The Laughing Drum it’s the Daily Show, John Oliver and shows like that because they’re sharply funny, they poke fun, and that look of news, I love that.

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For Walking Eagle, obviously The Onion, The Beaverton, those are the most obvious sites. But when I was a kid, I remember reading Kurt Vonnegut, just laughing my head off at his books. And it’s funny — it only came back to me recently, that feeling that I got from reading Kurt Vonnegut. It’s sort of the feeling that I’ve gotten writing some of these stories. He’s such an absurdist, and it’s not really satire in a sense, it’s kind of a dry, absurd humour. And I didn’t think of it until recently and I think that’s kind of what I’m going for.

There aren’t a lot of Indigenous comics who are doing that sort of thing, so it’s hard to look to that for inspiration, unfortunately.

What are the limitations you see for the mainstream news coverage of Indigenous people in Canada?

One of the most frustrating things for me about mainstream media is their inability to call something racist when it’s clearly racist. They put it in quotes or they try and find any creative way they can for them to not say something is racist even though it’s pretty racist. News shouldn’t express an opinion, but at the same time it should be able to call things what they are.

For me, the strength in going to fake news was my ability to get things off my chest. It was a huge relief. I had all of these things bottled up, all of these feelings I had for stories and issues I’ve covered for the news, to finally be able to say, “You know what, I’m not bound by those rules anymore. I don’t have to be fair, I don’t have to be even sided, I can call things what they are.”