RLG101H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Potlatch
Document Summary
The ceremony is about demonstrating hospitality and redistributing wealth, it consists of a feast which the hosting family presents the guests with gifts. Before contact with europeans, these gifts included items ex. Gifts today include manufactured goods ex artwork, cash, practical household items. The practice marks important milestones of life ex. Marriage, childbirth or death and includes music, theatre and ceremonial dancing. It serves to indicate social status since families show their wealth and importance by giving away or destroying more resources than other families. Christian missionaries saw this event as useless and uncivilized but recognized it as the central element of the native culture. Getting rid of this practice, they thought would facilitate assimilation into the dominant. Govts agreed and the potlatch was made illegal in canada first in 1884 then banned in us few years later. The law was hard to enforce and native communities were large and widespread so could often hold potlatches in secret.
