Healing through laughter: Brett Mooswa, an Indigenous Canadian TikTok star

Written By Guest User, Posted on June 24, 2020

Canada, it’s time you met Brett Mooswa. 

Mooswa, an Indigenous man from Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation (Loon Lake) in northern Saskatchewan, is a rising star on the social media giant TikTok thanks to his comedic videos. Only active on the platform since January, Mooswa, who releases videos under the TikTok handle @brettstoise, has already amassed over 140,000 followers at the time of publication. 

To learn about the man behind the hilarious TikTok videos, The National Telegraph sat down with Mooswa over a Zoom call and discussed his background, what inspires him to create content, and where he hopes to take his TikTok efforts in the future. 

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Tell us a bit about your story and your background and how you got into all this.

“Well, my name is Brett Mooswa. I’m from Loon Lake, Saskatchewan. Makwa Sahgaiehcan originally. And how I got into TikTok was, I didn’t really know too much about it up until January. I had a friend of mine that asked me, well, he told me that I should be part of it, that I’d be good at it. So I eventually joined it. I didn’t really know what it was until I started picking up the things here and there. So, yeah, things are starting to look up in that aspect.”

What’s your goal with TikTok and what’s your message? What are you trying to do with it?

“My main goal for TikTok is to simply share laughter with the community that I have. I believe that laughter is the best medicine out there, one of the best medicines out there. And I push that to the forefront of what I do for most of my videos. It’s been received really well and so I’m grateful for that part.”

You mentioned laughter there, do you see comedy as a way to kind of unite people and heal differences or divides?

“Yeah, exactly. Especially now with everything going on, that’s one of the reasons why it became important to me to make as many videos as I can during this time when people are feeling like they don’t really have an escape route for being at home and everything. If they go on the app if they see me and they see what I do, hopefully I can share some cheer and bring some laughter to them because, yeah, like I said, laughter is one of the best medicines.”

Have you been able to connect with different people, especially Indigenous people across the country?

“I’ve tapped strong connections with Sherry McKay, who is also on the app. She’s successful, as well as Notorious Cree also. I’m connected with these people and we share the same goal, right, we want to share joy, with our culture and show what we have to offer. For instance, with Notorious, that’s his dancing, right, that’s also healing. And Sherry McKay, too, we do the same thing. We share the humor part of it. And so that is what we do for healing.”

I noticed you’re a Christian as well. Does that play into what you do on TikTok and the kind of content you create there?

“It does, just being faith based with my stuff. I want to share love first, right? And that’s what I believe Christ came to do. And if you notice, in one of my videos where I mentioned that the first colonizers that came here didn’t come with that love that Jesus came with. So with that being said, that’s just with being faith based, I want to push love out as much as I can, with everything that I do, because that’s who Jesus is, that’s who I believe that he is.”

I’ve seen you blow up on the app a bunch of times. What has it been like to get famous from TikTok? 

“It’s been pretty crazy. I actually didn’t expect any of this to happen, how it’s happening. It’s still growing. It still amazes me to see people recognize what I do and I’ve never thought in all my years that I’d be doing something like this, spreading joy in this way. It’s just been a great honour just to be able to share what I do with my people that are on the app and with others also.”

Do you have like a day job or anything or is this your full time gig now?

“No, no, it’s not a full time gig yet. It’d be nice because I do have a lot of material that I do want to share but I also have a job right so I have requirements to fill in that part. But if the office opportunity presents itself where I can make something like this a full time gig, that’d be the best, right? Because this is what I love doing. I love sharing humor and joy, and sharing love. And that’s what I want to do.”

What do you think the future holds for you? Are you looking to kind of expand from TikTok and get onto other platforms? Get more into comedy on YouTube perhaps?

“Something like that, yeah. If things continue to go well for me on this app and everything, and if I can expand what I do on to other apps. Even voice acting, I’m sure I’m capable of doing things in that aspect also. So yeah, eventually, if things continue to go well, I just want to keep on doing what I do and hopefully that gets me towards a broader audience.”

You talked a bit about your origin story at the beginning there. Did you have any training in comedy or drama growing up? Or was this just a natural gift you had? 

“When I used to go to school I did a drama play and that was about it. After that I did a couple videos with my friends and everything. And it’s nice right? Just to have immediate family just to watch what you do. When stuff like this [getting popular on TikTok] started to happen, it just blew my mind.”

This interview has been condensed and edited for written consumption. If you’re interested in the full video version, check it out here

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One response to “Healing through laughter: Brett Mooswa, an Indigenous Canadian TikTok star”

  1. Alvina says:

    So proud of Brett, he’s leading our young people to adventure that there’s more to life than how young people are portrayed as being on drugs and gangs. Brett does away with this stereotype on young people by doing tiktok and offering laughter and happiness. 😊