{"id":12336,"date":"2008-11-13T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T08:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/potlatch.html"},"modified":"2008-11-13T08:30:09","modified_gmt":"2008-11-13T08:30:09","slug":"potlatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/11\/13\/potlatch.html","title":{"rendered":"Potlatch"},"content":{"rendered":"

A ceremonial feast held by some Indians of the northwestern coast of North America (as in celebrating a marriage or a new accession) in which the host gives gifts to tribesmen and others to display his superior wealth (sometimes, formerly, to his own impoverishment) <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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For a few seasons of my youth I attended summer camp at Sequoyah and Chosatonga in North Carolina. These camps included a lot of Native American themed activities though a potlatch, being so integral a part of genuine tribal culture, would not likely have been one of them.<\/p>\n

I have to say, I never quite keyed in to these activities. My mother said I "hated the Indians" (as it was still customary to call native Americans at the time), but I don’t think that’s true. Even as a child I never "hated" anything, though I tried.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Native American rituals and customs to which I was exposed I can only say that I simply never connected with them. Like a lot of people I believed the stereotype of Native Americans as a pacific people who weep at the site of garbage strewn along the Interstate, and I think that stereotype made them seem unapproachable.<\/p>\n

A few years ago I found myself driving through the Winnebago Indian Reservation in Nebraska. Aside from casinos around Miami I can not remember another time when I was on Native American land. I could not tell you how I arrived at these assumptions but I drove through Winnebago assuming this would be pastoral, beautiful land. It was not.<\/p>\n

I may have been in Nebraska when I heard a radio interview in which a Native American author described the practice of running herds of buffalo off of cliffs. I like those stories, too. The earthy tales.<\/p>\n

I should learn more about the passages and indignities of the Native Americans. Through most of my school years the references to what our government did to them generally comprised a mere few sentences. I know one history teacher said we "screwed" them, which seemed like a strong choice of word at the time, but the substance of what that teacher meant by "screwed" was not articulated in a way that I remember.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A ceremonial feast held by some Indians of the northwestern coast of North America (as in celebrating a marriage or a new accession) in which the host gives gifts to tribesmen and others to display his superior wealth (sometimes, formerly, to his own impoverishment)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-potlatch","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}