The potlatch is a ceremonial gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, including the Heiltsuk, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish, in which a host gives away or sometimes deliberately destroys valuable property to demonstrate wealth, power and status. Far more than a party, the potlatch functioned as these peoples' primary institution of governance, law and economic redistribution. Franz Boas documented the practice extensively beginning in the late 1880s, recording in 1888 that 'it is a strict law that bids us to distribute our property among friends and neighbors,' and he later publicly criticized the Canadian government's 1884 legal ban on the potlatch. That ban remained in force from 1885 to 1951; the potlatch was decriminalized in 1951 and has since been actively revived.
Facts
Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountPacific Northwest Coast of North America (present-day British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest United States), among the Heiltsuk, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish peoples specifically. 1 Documented YearSourced to the subject's own accountBoas's earliest documented ethnographic account; the practice was banned by Canada in 1885 and Boas's documentation and public criticism of the ban followed through subsequent decades. Cross-Tradition Connections
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