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Potlatch
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Potlatch
A potlatch is a highly complex event or 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 that has
been practiced for thousands of years. Such peoples included the Haida,
Nuxalk, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish
nations.
About
The potlatch takes the form of governance, economy, social status and
continuing spiritual practices. A potlatch, usually involving ceremony,
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 of wealth,
dance performances, and other ceremonies. Status of families are raised by
those who do not have the most resources, but distribute the resources. The
host demonstrates their wealth and prominence through giving away the
resources gathered for the event, which in turn prominent participants
reciprocate when they hold their own potlatches.
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.[1]
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[2] 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"[3] that
was seen as wasteful, unproductive and injurious to the practitioners. The
church also targeted the potlatch system at 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.
This short section requires expansion.
Continuation
The potlatch has fascinated and perhaps been misunderstood by Westerners for
many years.[4] 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.
This short section requires expansion.
Overview
The name is derived from Chinook Jargon; every practicing Pacific Northwest
language group has a variation. The Chinook Jargon word is a homonym having
nothing to do with "pot" or "latch".[4] Coast Salish Lushootseed potlatching
is xwsalikw, from xwɐš, "throw, broadcast, distribute goods", related to
pús(u), "throw through the air, throw at".[5] 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.][6]
References
1. ^ (1) Boyd (2) Cole & Chaikin
2. ^ An Act further to amend "The Indian Act, 1880," S.C. 1884 (47 Vict.),
c. 27, s. 3.
3. ^ Historical quote in Cole & Chaikin
4. ^ a b Cole & Chaikin
5. ^ (1) Bates, Hess, & Hilbert pp. xii–xiv, 164, 340
(2) See International Phonetic Alphabet for pronunciation, or Duwamish
(tribe) #footnote for a brief summary.
6. ^ (1) The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
(2) "[O]ften, formerly, to his own impoverishment": At the time of writing
the 1913 Webster, the economics of the potlatch in context were widely
misunderstood in non-Native society.
* Bates, Dawn; Hess, Thom; Hilbert, Vi; map by Dassow, Laura (1994). in
Bates, Dawn, ed.: 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.
Retrieved on not recorded.
Translation of Essai sur le don.
Author bio "Mauss, Marcel", Anthropology Biography Web, EMuseum Minnesota
State University, Mankato.
Reference searched 21 August 2006.
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