Potlatch

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A potlatch is a festival ceremony among certain Indigenous peoples in North America, including nations on the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Such peoples included the Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish nations. It has been the study of many anthropologists, went through a history of rigorous ban by the Canadian government, and continues to be practiced.

About

The potlatch is a festival or ceremony practiced among indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. It is important to note the differences and uniqueness among the different cultural groups and nations along the coast. Each nation, tribe, and sometimes clans, have their own way of practicing the potlatch so it presents a very diverse presentation and meaning. Nonetheless, the main purpose has and still is the redistribution of wealth procured by families. A potlatch includes celebration of births, rites of passages, weddings, funerals, puberty, and honoring of the deceased. Through political, economic and social exchange, it is a vital part of these Indigenous people's culture. Although protocol differs among the Indigenous nations, the potlatch could involve a feast, with music, dance, theatricality and spiritual ceremonies. The most sacred ceremonies are usually observed in the winter.

Within it, hierarchical relations within and between clans, villages, and nations, are observed and reinforced through the distribution or destruction of wealth, dance performances, and other ceremonies. The Status of any given family is raised not by who has the most resources, but by who distributes the most resources. The host demonstrates their wealth and prominence through giving away goods or by burning the resources accumulated for the event. Dorothy Johansen describes the dynamic: "In the potlatch, the host in effect challenged a guest chieftain to exceed him in his 'power' to give away or to destroy goods. If the guest did not return 100 percent on the gifts received and destroy even more wealth in a bigger and better bonfire, he and his people lost face and so his 'power' was diminished.

History

Before the arrival of the Europeans, gifts included storable food (oolichan [candle fish] oil or dried food), canoes, and slaves among the very wealthy, but otherwise not income-generating assets such as resource rights. The influx of manufactured trade goods such as blankets and sheet copper into the Pacific Northwest caused inflation in the potlatch in the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. Some groups, such as the Kwakwaka'wakw, used the potlatch as an arena in which highly competitive contests of status took place. In rare cases, goods were actually destroyed after being received. The catastrophic mortalities due to introduced diseases laid many inherited ranks vacant or open to remote or dubious claim—providing they could be validated—with a suitable potlatch.

The potlatch was a cultural practice much studied by ethnographers. "Potlatch is a festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the North pacific Coast of North America, including the Salish and Kwakiutl of Washington and British Columbia." Sponsors of a potlatch give away many useful items such as food, blankets, worked ornamental mediums of exchange called "coppers", and many other various items. In return, they earned prestige. To give a potlatch enhanced one’s reputation and validated social rank, the rank and requisite potlatch being proportional, both for the host and for the recipients by the gifts exchanged. Prestige increased with the lavishness of the potlatch, the value of the goods given away in it.

Potlatch ban

Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885 and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom that was seen as wasteful, unproductive and injurious to the practitioners. It should be noted that the "goods given away or destroyed" included slaves captured from neighboring tribes. The church also targeted the potlatch system as what appeared to be "demonic" and "satanic." Despite the ban, potlatching continued clandestinely for decades. Numerous nations petitioned the government to remove the law against a custom that they saw as no worse than Christmas, when friends were feasted and gifts were exchanged. As the potlatch became less of an issue in the twentieth century, the ban was dropped from the books, in the United States in 1934 and in Canada in 1951.

Continuation

The potlatch has fascinated and perhaps been misunderstood by Westerners for many years. Thorstein Veblen's use of the ceremony in his book Theory of the Leisure Class made potlatching a symbol of "conspicuous consumption". Other authors such as Georges Bataille were struck by what they saw as the anarchic, communal nature of the potlatch's operation—it is for this reason that the organization Lettrist International named their review after the potlatch in the 1950s. Kim Stanley Robinson adopted the term in his Mars trilogy.

Etymology and definition

The name is derived from Chinook Jargon; every practicing Pacific Northwest language group has a variation. The Chinouk Jargon word is a homonym having nothing to do with "pot" or "latch". Coast Salish Lushootseed potlatching is x^wsalik^w, from x^wɐš, "throw, broadcast, distribute goods", related to pús(u), "throw through the air, throw at". The casting or throwing of suitable gifts is a part of a potlatch ceremony.

n. [Chinook potlatch, pahtlatch, fr.Nootka pahchilt, pachalt, a gift.]

1. Among the Kwakiutl, Chimmesyan, and other Indians of the northwestern coast of North America, a ceremonial distribution by a man of gifts to his own and neighboring tribesmen, often, formerly, to his own impoverishment. Feasting, dancing, and public ceremonies accompany it.

2. Hence, a feast given to a large number of persons, often accompanied by gifts. [Colloq., Northwestern America]

[Webster 1913 Suppl.]

References

Jonaitis, Aldona, ed. ."Cheifly Feasts: The Enduring Kwkaiutl Potltach." 1991. AMHH. Seattle.
Bates, Dawn; Hess, Thom; Hilbert, Vi; map by Dassow, Laura (1994). Lushootseed dictionary. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. ISBN (alk. paper).
Completely reformatted, greatly revised and expanded update of Hess, Thom, Dictionary of Puget Salish (University of Washington Press, 1976).
Boyd, Robert (1999). The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline Among Northwest Coast Indians,. Seattle and Vancouver: University of Washington Press and University of British Columbia Press. ISBN (alk. paper), ISBN.
Mauss, Marcel ([1925] 1990). The Gift. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN.
Translation of Essai sur le don.
Author bio "Mauss, Marcel", Anthropology Biography Web, EMuseum Minnesota State University, Mankato
Reference searched 21 August 2006.

Bibliography

External links

U'mista Museum of potlatch artifacts.
Potlatch An exhibition from the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
Money An analysis of Potlatch and modern versions of the same from a pyschohistorical perspective. Not NPOV, but does provide references.
University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Oliver S. Van Olinda Photographs A collection of 420 photographs depicting life on Vashon Island, Whidbey Island, Seattle and other communities around Puget Sound, Washington, from the 1880s through the 1930s. This collection provides a glimpse of early pioneer activities, industries and occupations, recreation, street scenes, ferries and boat traffic at the turn of the century. Also included are a few photographs of Native American activities such as documentation of a potlatch on Whidbey Island.
Anash Interactive - An online destination where users create comics, write stories, watch webisodes, download podcasts, play games, read stories and comics by other members, and find out about the Tlingit people of Canada.

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