Potlatch

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Photo by Edward Curtis of a Kwakwaka'wakw potlatch with dancers and singers

A Potlatch (also potlatch or potlatch ) is a festival of American Indians of the Pacific Northwest . With him gifts are distributed or exchanged in a ritual way . The more valuable and exquisite the gifts given are, the more important the position and lineage of the person who gave the gifts are.

The potlach is a central part of the northwest coast culture . The most famous element that comes from this culture is the totem pole . The erection of a totem pole is one of several possible occasions on which the potlatch was celebrated, but more often the birth or death of tribal members was the reason for the celebration.

Potlatch was banned in Canada from 1884 to the 1950s . Since then, attempts have been made to revive the original essence of the potlatch in a contemporary way.

The festival of giving

The potlatch is known among Indian societies in the coastal regions of northwest America as the "Festival of Giving". It was common practice for the host chief to give his guests plenty of entertainment and generous gifts , even at ordinary festivals , but this was owed to his general duty as a host, rooted in Indian culture, and was regularly replied by other chiefs and their village groups. A potlatch, on the other hand, rarely took place and had a profound religious and ritual significance. Many chiefs only held one or two in their entire lives.

Also, the potlatch was not common throughout the Pacific Northwest. It was not committed in the coastal Salish on Puget Sound in Washington .

The ritual meaning

In order to hold a potlatch, a special occasion was required, because a central importance of the festival lay in the passing on and use of chieftain names, titles and privileges inherited within the ancestral group . These had to be witnessed in front of high-ranking guests and cemented by giving rich gifts, whereby the ranking and position of the guests to be presented had to be carefully observed, because this also recognized and strengthened their social and ritual position. The occasion for such a ceremony could be the birth of the firstborn son, the death of a high-ranking relative or the erection of a totem pole. The more valuable and exquisite the gifts presented were, the more important the position and lineage of the person who gave the potlatch were. In Indian society, the classification into the series of ancestors was of essential importance, as these were considered an ever present part of the real world. So if a potlatch achieved great honor , it also honored the ancestors and in this way contributed to ensuring order and the continuation of the world.

The social meaning

The gifts given at a potlatch could achieve an enormous value for the circumstances of the donor and his social environment. It happened that the heirs of a high-ranking deceased gave all of their inherited economic assets at such a festival in order to pay homage to their ancestor, to enjoy his goodwill and to take a rank according to their ancestry in the spiritual and ritual appreciation of their contemporaries to be able to. For the social equilibrium of Indian society, this had the consequence that there was seldom a permanent accumulation of wealth in the hands of individual persons or family branches.

The ban on the potlatch

Potlatch of Klallam , watercolor by James Gilchrist Swan (May 1859)

In the course of the 19th century this system fell apart through contact with European traders and values. Due to contact with Europeans and increased mortality due to imported diseases, important positions in the communities often remained unfilled. This led to an increase in potlatches used by young chiefs to woo recognition. The riches made available by the European immigrants also enabled young chiefs to compete in holding potlatches - a struggle in which many of the young chiefs drove themselves and the tribal group entrusted to them to ruin.

The potlatch moved into the focus of assimilation efforts by governments and the church. The missionary William Duncan wrote in 1875 that the potlatch was "by far the greatest of all obstacles on the way of the Indians to Christians, or even civilized behavior".

In Canada , the potlatch was banned in 1884 by an amendment to the Indian Act , and a little later in the USA too. The ban was largely enacted at the urging of missionaries and government workers who viewed potlatches as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to civilized values.

Even the officials entrusted with enforcement often found the law too harsh and often failed to enforce it. They assumed that the potlatch would go away on its own as soon as a younger, educated and “more developed” generation grew up. There are also reports that the ban was circumvented by some communities by celebrating the potlatch around Christmas and camouflaging it.

The ban was in place until the 1950s. In Canada, the relevant paragraph, which banned the organization of potlatches, was deleted from the Indian Act in 1951, thus de facto decriminalizing the holding of potlatches. The public inauguration of Wawadit'la, created by Kwakwaka'wakw artist Mungo Martin , in Thunderbird Park at the Royal British Columbia Museum was the first legal public potlatch ceremony in British Columbia in 1953, after 70 years. Since then, attempts have been made to revive the original essence of the potlach in a contemporary way.

See also

literature

  • Ulli Steltzer: A Haida Potlatch. Olympic Marketing Corp, 1984, ISBN 0-295-96159-7 .
  • Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff: Potlatch: conquête et invention. Editions d'en bas, Lausanne 1986, ISBN 2-8290-0079-X .
  • Margaret Anderson, Marjorie M. Halpin (Eds.): Potlatch at Gitsegukla: William Beynon's 1945 Field Notebooks. University of British Columbia Press, 1999, ISBN 0-7748-0743-1 .
  • Marcel Mauss : The gift: form and function of exchange in archaic societies. 8th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-28343-1 .
  • David Seven Deers: Potlatch. with pictures by Merle Michaelis. Little Tiger Verlag , Gifkendorf 2012, ISBN 978-3-931081-76-8 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Kenneth Greg Watson: Native Americans of Puget Sound - A Brief History of the First People and Their Cultures. HistoryLink.org, June 29, 1999.
  2. ↑ (1) Boyd (2) Cole & Chaikin.
  3. ^ Robin Fisher: Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774-1890. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 1977, p. 207.
  4. ^ An Act further to amend "The Indian Act, 1880," SC 1884 (47 Vict.), C. 27, p. 3.
  5. ↑ GM Sproat In: Douglas Cole, Ira Chaikin An Iron Hand upon the People: The Law against the Potlatch on the Northwest Coast. Vancouver / Toronto 1990, p. 15.
  6. ^ Douglas Cole, Ira Chaikin: An Iron Hand upon the People: The Law against the Potlatch on the Northwest Coast. Conclusion, Vancouver / Toronto 1990.
  7. ↑ Christopher Bracken: The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1997, p. 181.
  8. ↑ Aldona Jonaitis: Discovering Totem Poles . University of Washington Press, Seattle 2012, ISBN 978-0-295-99187-0 , p. 12.