The Potlatch — Spiritual Economics of the Northwest Coast
The Potlatch ceremony of Northwest Coast peoples is a complete alternative economic system in which status is conferred not by accumulating wealth but by giving it away — the most generous giver is the most honored.
The Potlatch (from Chinook Jargon, derived from a Nuu-chah-nulth word meaning 'to give') was the central social and economic institution of Northwest Coast peoples — Tlingit, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Tsimshian, and many others. At a Potlatch, a chief or family demonstrated their wealth and status by giving away everything they had accumulated — blankets, food, carved objects, canoes — to guests who gathered from throughout the region. The most generous giver held the highest status. The ceremony also served as a legal record: witnesses received gifts in exchange for witnessing and remembering births, deaths, marriages, transfers of names and hereditary privileges. When the Canadian government banned the Potlatch in 1885 (enforced until 1951), it understood correctly that the ceremony was the foundation of an alternative civilization — one in which generosity, not accumulation, was the supreme value.
A man who gives away everything gains everything.
Economist David Graeber in Debt: The First 5,000 Years uses the Potlatch as evidence that gift economies predate and are more sophisticated than market economies — systems in which generosity, not profit, drives social organization.
Northwest Coast oral tradition
Written about in
- What Native American teachings say about community
On the Northwest Coast a family's standing was shown by how much it handed to its guests, who in return witnessed and remembered names, marriages and inheritances. Canada banned the ceremony in 1885 and enforced the ban until 1951, which says something about how differently it read from outside.