Information about 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.

Pre-contact

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 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.^[3] 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 Chinook Jargon word is a homonym having nothing to do with "pot" or "latch".^[4] 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".^[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]

See also

• Koha, a related concept among the Māori
• Kula ring, a similar concept in the Trobriand Islands (Oceania)
• Moka, another similar concept in Papua New Guinea
• Sepik Coast exchange, yet another similar concept in Papua New Guinea
• Guy Debord, French Situationist writer on the subject of potlatch and commodity reification.
• Gift economy
• Burning Man

References

• 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). . 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.

Bibliography

Main article: List of bibliographical materials on the potlatch

External links

• 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 , 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.

HAAXW SKIDEGATE POTLATCH HISTORY

Potlatch is a form and a process that serves to develop indigenous societies around the simple principle of the kitchen, or the hearth. The kitchen is the nerve center of the Family, and in ancient times when large extended Families and Clans occupied Longhouses, the necessity of eating enabled the head Chief to assert control and to maintain jurisdiction over the people and the territory. As a population increased and communities became more complex, the idea was to hold a community meal where all of the necessary business was done. The next step in the evolution of the ceremony observed on Contact was to repeat the process by inviting surrounding Villages to attend to eat and speak and be entertained. Everything that needed to be done to regulate the People's lives was carried out in front of the Titled witnesses, and it should be noted that the objective of Potlatch was to keep the general peace of the known world.

Potlatch is said to be a Chinook word. Chinook was a trader's language that served as Lingua Franca for the complex communities that formed on the Pacific coast during the occupation by Europeans (Euro). Potlatch came from the Northern matrix of advanced Tribes that owned Haida Gwaii, the Skeena and Nass Rivers, and the Inside Passage Archipelago, all the way down to Comox BC., with satellites among the Salish of Puget Sound and further down the coast to Oregon. The Fraser Salish were resisting the system when the Euro arrived, and together with the Euro, were able to halt the expansion of the culture outward from the Haida/Skeena capital. The affix 'Kit', or 'Kaat', can be observed in the names of the People and of their Villages, all the way from Alaska to Washington (Kitksan, Kitamaat, Kitsalano, Kitsap, etc). Potlatch is derived from the word for three in the Kitksan/Tsimsian language; Haida call all the Mainland People Kgelatl' and that sound caught on when the Inviter/Announcer shouted out the Titles and Nationalities of the Northern Aristocrats: "Kgelatl! Tsalmkgekaat Haaxw, or Delgamuukw, or Skidegate", for example, and so those from other Tribes remembered this exclaimed Title that covered most Hosts and many guests. The source of the prefixed ‘Pot’ is self-evident in a feast situation. Any connection with 'Potluck' probably grew out of the popular use of the term Potlatch so neither word has a real etymology but instead come from the combination of the phonetics with the whole cooking and eating atmosphere.

The power of Potlatch is still present. This must be recognized because history has begun to eclipse the Church-State complex that felt such a need to criminalize this culture. With the decline of Euro Religion and the failing of the Nation-State system, Potlatch offers means of bringing the planetary population into a single center of government. Haaxw is spearheading revival of the Religion and the Function.

Potlatch must be understood in the context of ecology. It is said in Skidegate that the first potlatch took place at Naiquoon, or Rose Spit on the North Beach of Graham Island, the northernmost of the Queen Charlotte island group. Jaat Kos Andl'ins, Ancestress of the Eagle Clan landed there during a strong north wind that also washed tons and tons of every kind of seafood up to the tide line. By taking credit for the bonanza She then allowed others to share the food in exchange for recognizing Her Title to the beach. Later when the People wanted to form central Villages, She chose to locate in Skidegate rather than at Masset, which is closer. By settling in the center of the Islands Jaat Kos Andl'ins was able to build a new unity among the three surviving Groups, the Southern, the Northern and the Alaskan Kaigani, and following this they all decided to be known as Haida. The ripple-, and trickle-down effect of this wealth, and the development of the Aristocracy, created the Hereditary Hierarchies that then spread to the Mainland and up the Skeena River. This unique and intelligent use of the resources was a perfect fit with the cyclical rounds of harvests, enabling Chiefs to control their People and to justify their claims of absolute ownership of Rivers, Mountains and other sites and fishing-grounds.

This description of Potlatch explains the claims of the Chiefs to be Ecologists. One can imagine a Chief inviting others to Potlatch where they are advised to respect the ancient Titles because failure to do so would cause eventual famine. The reported rivalries are logical in this setting. The highest Titles controlled the best sources of food and other products. On the death of a Chief there would be two or more claimants trying to gain control of the Title and they would 'bid' against each other for the Estate. The successful Chief would have displayed greater competence to be the Successor by distributing the most accumulated wealth to the rest of the People, not unlike modern Politicians. Witnessing guests would have heard the claims and accepted the payment of their 'hawal', as proof of the event and evidence of their obligation to respect and reciprocate the Chief's jurisdiction.

Potlatch kept peace by introducing alternatives to violence when a neighbor or neighboring Village became short of food. Potlatch allowed the display of Crests that were global to the whole coast, showing who was in one's own House or in another house, allowing everyone to keep to their own grounds. On visiting another community an Eagle would seek out the Totem or the Paintings of the Eagles in this other town.

The authority for the foregoing is personal experience. Haaxw was born in 1943 and lived throughout the Haida/Tsalmsian Empire all his life, engaging in Potlatch and noting how all of the activity formed a single cultural cosmology. Haaxw is the second named Tsalmkgekaat in Delgamuukw versus the Queen. A former Haaxw, this writer's father, raised his Totem Pole twice: once at Kispiox, and then after his first wife died and that Village turned against him, he moved it to Kitanmaax where it still stands as the last of the Totems Potlatched during the interdiction of Potlatch.

This 'Haaxw', the writer, intends to revive the whole Potlatch by means of modern technology and by teaching the true World Religion that underlies Potlatch.

The rumor that Chiefs destroyed valuable property is explained two ways: Euro impact brought widespread death among the People and when the population fell there was more of everything then the number of recipients to Potlatch. If it really happened it was an anomalous reaction to conflict with Euro presence. It has to be acknowledged as well, that Euro felt the need to ridicule those who they wanted to displace. The Ideology of Potlatch has to be adjusted for the period between 1880, when the Potlatch Law was passed, and 1951 when it was suspended.

The Residential Schools atrocities were perpetrated in concert with the Legislated Act to drive the Indian out of Potlatch and out of the children. Potlatch never stopped but became derogated by the pressure of Euro and the deviousness of the Colonial regimes. Section 35, Constitution Act 1982 certifies Potlatch again and the system must be granted support to get going again.

Haaxw 03:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)