Potlatch and the Future of Philanthropy
Potlatch and the Future of Philanthropy
Introduction
The potlatch (from the Chinook word Patshatl) is a ceremony integral to the governing structure, culture, and spiritual traditions of various First Nations living on the Northwest Coast and in parts of the interior western subarctic. It primarily functions to redistribute wealth, confer status and rank upon individuals, kin groups, and clans, and to establish claims to names, powers, and rights to hunting and fishing territories. While the practice and formality of the ceremony differs among First Nations, it is commonly held on the occasion of important social events, such as marriages, births, and funerals. A great potlatch might last for several days and involves feasting, spirit dances, singing, and theatrical demonstrations.
Historically, the potlatch functioned to redistribute wealth in what some refer to as a gift-giving ceremony. Valuable goods, such as firearms, blankets, clothing, carved cedar boxes, canoes, food, and prestige items, such as coppers, were accumulated by high-ranking individuals over time, sometimes years. These goods are later bestowed on invited guests as gifts by the host or even destroyed with great ceremony as a show of superior generosity, status, and prestige over rivals. In addition to its economic redistributive and kinship functions, the potlatch maintains community solidarity and hierarchical relations within and between bands and nations.
History
As part of a policy of assimilation, the federal government banned the potlatch from 1884 to 1951 in an amendment to the Indian Act. The government and its supporters saw the ceremony as anti-Christian, reckless, and wasteful of personal property. They failed to understand the potlatch’s symbolic importance as well as its communal economic exchange value.
By the time the ban was repealed in 1951, due largely to the difficulties of enforcement and changes in attitudes, traditional Indigenous identities had been damaged and social relations disrupted. However, the ban did not completely eradicate the potlatch, which still exists in various communities today.
The potlatch was prohibited because it offended Christian missionaries and because it involved the redistribution of wealth, contrary to the government policy of self-sufficiency through the acquisition of property. Potlatches are now held, on average, once every two weeks among British Columbia's Gitxsan communities, says Heather Harris, a professor of First Nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. Harris, who is of Cree and Metis descent, says contemporary potlatches last eight to twelve hours, as opposed to four or five days in the era before they were banned, and can be held in conjunction with births, deaths, marriages, and even divorces. Participants dance, listen to speeches, and share a meal while the sponsoring families distribute gifts. Harris says she has seen as much as $55,000 in cash and goods given away during a potlatch. "These are big events that can be the focus of people's lives, especially a chief," says Harris. "A person's esteem in the community comes from giving rather than keeping."
Over the past decade, thousands of Indigenous Canadians have made commitments as part of a noticeable resurgence in native spirituality. Ceremonies are now held to bestow Indian names on newborn children, to celebrate marital unions, and to honour the departed. Rites once suppressed by government and religious authorities – the sun dance on the Prairies and the potlatch on the West Coast -- have been revived. And many Canadian First Nations, particularly in areas where centuries of contact with European culture led to the disappearance of local customs, are making pilgrimages to recognized strongholds of native spirituality -- places such as the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho reservations in South Dakota and Wyoming. "There's a tremendous amount of activity these days," says Linda Pelly-Landrie, president of the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre in Saskatoon. "Indigenous people are realizing that their traditions are as valuable as anyone else's."
In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, sweats and fasts, which nearly disappeared a century ago, are now held on almost every Micmac and Maliseet reserve, says Andrea Bear Nicholas, a professor of native studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Spiritual leaders have also revived ceremonies unique to East Coast natives. In mid-July, Gilbert Sunipass, a Micmac from the Buctouche Reserve 60 km north of Moncton, N.B., held a sweat lodge and feast on the first anniversary of the death of an acquaintance. About 50 to 60 people attended, though not everyone participated in the sweat. After a communal meal, family and close friends of the deceased participated in a ritualized exchange of gifts called a giveaway. "We believe it takes a spirit one year to travel from our world to the next," said Sunipass. "When the spirit is travelling, we don't grieve because that would delay their trip."
In potlatches, there is no such thing as a passive audience because all are active participants of lived history experienced by the entire community. Witnesses are asked to take on a special role that serves a wholistic, summative assessment of what has transpired. In Coast Salish potlatches, for example, formal witnesses are called from as many families and distant cultures as possible. In doing so, there is an implicit obligation for witnesses to testify about potlatch events. These culturally diverse witnesses speak to the integrity of what will be carried forward, which is why the more diverse potlatch participants are (and how far they came to travel), the richer the potlatch becomes.
In essence, potlatches contributed in important ways to the social cohesion that was necessary to enable Indigenous people and their traditional system of governance to thrive for millennia.
Potlatches and Community-Based Philanthropy
During the pandemic, a number of prominent, large foundations began publicly adopting the tenets of trust-based philanthropy and community-based philanthropy, guided by the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Partly they did this in order to get emergency funding quickly to community organizations “on the ground” that were responding to the many crises brought on or worsened by COVID-19.
In trust-based philanthropy, the power dynamics between funders and grantee partners shift and have the potential to transform relationships. The result is a process that’s more personal and less transactional, more trusting, and less suspicious, and more about sharing power than maintaining the status quo. Community-based philanthropy allows communities to self-identify how best to care for their own so that all families can reach their full potential and thrive. Community philanthropy is both a form of, and a force for, building local assets, capacities, and trust — ultimately, as a way to shift power closer to the ground so that local people have greater control over their own destiny.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) focuses specifically on people who have been historically marginalized and systemically disadvantaged, including (but not limited to) individuals in Indigenous communities of different tribes, citizenship, geographic residency, gender identities, sexual orientations, and abilities. Moreover, it is critical that we consider these identities beyond any definitions placed on them; we seek to understand the ways in which these identities intersect and how that influences outcomes.
Many of these changes to philanthropy have survived the pandemic and the signs are encouraging and feel consistent with Indigenous value systems of trust, honor, respect, accountability, and being good relatives. These developments are also essential parts of decolonizing philanthropy. Edgar Villanueva, the author of Decolonizing Wealth, reminds us that money can be medicine when it’s used for “sacred, life-giving, restorative purposes.” Traditional potlatches are an example of such medicine — both a sacred celebration of community and a system for redistributing wealth so that all thrive.
Traditional philanthropy has too often erected barriers instead of bridges, denying entire groups of people participation in the mainstream funding process. We all lose as a result. Again, from Decolonizing Wealth: “All of us who have been forced to the margins are the very ones who harbor the best solutions for healing, progress, and peace, by virtue of our outsider perspectives and resilience.”
When COVID-19 began ravaging Indigenous communities, many non-profits in the sector began discussing how best to respond to the crisis. They began dreaming about the future of philanthropy by honoring and nurturing reciprocity with the seeds of the emerging tenets of trust-based and community-based philanthropy, guided by the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What if we could take the lessons of the pandemic and imagine a new path forward? A vision emerged of removing barriers by being more open and inclusive, cultivating relationships with grantee partners based on mutual trust and respect, and streamlining application and reporting processes.
The culture of acquiring wealth and status not by how much you accumulate to keep for yourself but by how much you accumulate to give away is the spirit of the potlatch. The idea of repaying kindness and support with an even larger gift of appreciation as well as teaching this tradition and instilling this value at an early age with young children is the heart of philanthropy.
Imagine if you had this same culture in your business, family, and community. Imagine if we gave status and honor to those who gave the most away to others? What would it be like if we always gave something of greater value than we received from our neighbors, teammates, or loved ones during times of need? What if we raised our children or taught our new team members from the very beginning to value service, giving, and repayment of kindnesses. Maybe a potlatch ceremony is just what our workforce, family, and world needs.
Putting Native Giving Tradition at the Center of Philanthropy
“Potlatch is a time for pride – a time for showing the masks and dances owned by the Chief or host giving the potlatch. It is a time for joy. When one’s heart is glad, he gives away gifts. Our Creator gave it to us, to be our way of doing things, to be our way of rejoicing, we who are [Kwakwaka ‘wakw]. Everyone on earth is given something. The potlatch was given to us to be our way of expressing joy.” — Elder Agnes Axu Alfred
Since 2002, the Seattle-based, Indigenous-led Potlatch Fund has been inspiring philanthropy by tapping into deep and longstanding Native giving traditions. By putting the potlatch tradition at the center of its work and its mission, Potlatch Fund has opened new pathways for Native communities to give back and reinvest in themselves. Native giving is all about reciprocity. Donations to Potlatch flow back into Native communities through grants to Native non-profits and Native artists – a kind of redistribution of wealth that is essential to the potlatching practice. Since 2005, the organization has granted more than $4.2 million back into Native communities across the Northwest, much of it contributed by Native donors.
Often the grants awarded activate a new cycle of reciprocity, where grantees become the givers – just as they would in the potlatch tradition. This is particularly true among the Native artists that the Potlatch Fund supports, either through small grants used to purchase supplies or equipment or through the organization’s artist-focused capacity building trainings. This supports artists in expanding their art practice and prompts a larger loop of giving back to one another and to their community. Grantees might donate artwork to Potlatch or invite the organization to exhibit or hold events where they can market their grant program. Others become direct donors or join Potlatch Fund’s community grant review team, helping leadership make decisions about whom they fund.
In an effort to uplift and showcase this spirit of Native giving even more visibly, Potlatch Fund used its most recent Catalyzing Community Giving initiative grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to help turn its Annual Fundraising Gala into its own kind of potlatch. As a result, the gala has become the organization’s most successful strategy for raising funds and catalyzing Native communities to reinvest in themselves. “It’s the way that we publicly enact that reciprocity and that potlatching tradition,” says Potlatch Fund’s former Development and Communications Manager Damara Jacobs-Morris. “A potlatch is a ceremony that’s a celebration of all that is life, and the gala ends up being that experience.”
The most recent gala drew more than 400 people from different tribes, organizations, and communities across the Northwest, with many traveling hundreds of miles to attend the celebration. They came from the east side of Montana, from rural parts of Oregon, and all through Washington because it’s such a big event. It brings all these people that normally wouldn’t necessarily get together to one place for a night of really positive energy.
The evening features song and dance performances, a shared meal, and opportunities for community members to stand up and talk about the changes that have happened in their lives because of philanthropy. It also features a silent auction filled with Native art – much of it donated by Potlatch grantees, and with many of the proceeds going toward artist grants. The organization also weaves parts of traditional potlatching protocol into the event. They’ll ask the hosting tribe to open the doors and welcome everybody, as they historically would welcome visitors. It’s an opportunity to share giving practices and to really show what Native philanthropy in action is like.
Ultimately, the goal of the gala matches the goal of the organization: to elevate philanthropy as a pathway for Indigenous people to have power over their own futures.
The Young Warrior Society: A Case Study
2020 was going to be a year of program expansion, of dreams coming to fruition, of increasing visibility in the community and beyond. The worldwide pandemic had other plans.
Since 2018, Tem Xwu lough First Food and Families — located on the Colville Reservation in the town of Nespelem, Washington — has been building connections and conducting education workshops in the community in order to pass critical cultural knowledge and skills to the next generation. One of its programs, the Young Warrior Society, regularly attracted youth from all over North Central Washington to its programs and activities, as well as up to 40 volunteers.
At the center of activities for the organization were land-based cultural education and sovereignty camps where 60 to 100 youth learned from adults and elders the lifeways and skills that had sustained their ancestors for thousands of years. Topics ranged from harvesting and preparing wild game and traditional plant foods to acquiring important survival skills to participating in traditional ceremonies, and more.
The camps grew so much in popularity and reputation that by 2019, they attracted the attention of an Australian film crew as well as additional local partners and volunteers from across the United States. That year, members of the Young Warrior Society also planted a garden and shared the resulting bounty with community members and the local food bank. They also increased their online presence, with videos of the land camps generating more than 25,000 views on social media.
Dan Nanamkin is the director of the Young Warrior Society. Nanamkin is a well-known educator, speaker, and all-around advocate for Indigenous cultural education. “We follow in our ancestors’ footsteps through the seasons,” Nanamkin says, “which means we change through the year our food systems and rites of passage that we follow and maintain to this day, and we strive to achieve this education in our youth.
“Unfortunately, a lot of our cultural education is not provided in schools,” Nanamkin says, which is a big part of the motivation behind the goal of the land camps “to share with youth in our communities our cultural values and way of life and create a bridge between our elders and our youth and our people.”
Pre-COVID plans for 2020 included extending that education even further by offering additional land camps, four in all, to follow the rhythms of the seasons. They held a winter storytelling and survival camp, but then COVID intervened. “And we didn’t really know what to do,” Nanamkin says. “Like everyone else, we were pretty frightened, you know, and our tribe had pretty strict regulations preventing outside people from coming onto the reservation and strict protocols on people who could gather.”
Like many groups, Nanamkin says the Young Warrior Society members adapted and changed course due to the pandemic. For one thing, they turned to traditional wisdom gleaned from decades of fighting plagues that decimated Native populations in the 1800s and decided to learn about plant medicines and how to gather, grow, and use them to provide care to those in their community sick with COVID. “So we were able to bring them food and medicines and our entire reservation became COVID free.”
Young Warrior Society participants also found other safe ways to be of service to their community. They doubled the size of their garden to grow even more food. They accompanied elders to appointments and into the mountains to help them gather seasonal berries and plants. They chopped wood for their neighbors. They started a podcast to bring inspiration and education to community members to help them cope with the grief and distress brought on by the pandemic and its many losses. They stood in the snow and sang to elders isolated and behind glass inside a convalescent home. They joined winter search parties for children and young men who went missing.
And then wildfires struck the area. “It was really devastating, the damage that was caused on both sides of our reservation,” Nanamkin says. Among other things, volunteers helped to drive food and medicines from one side to the other of the 1.4 million acre reservation to support firefighting efforts. “So yeah, we kept very busy,” Nanamkin says, “and next year’s going to be even busier. But you know, this is what we’re about. We love to help and learn, and we want to expand.”
With help from Potlatch Fund’s Resiliency Fund, the Young Warriors Society and Nanamkin moved forward in 2020 and 2021 cautiously with small gatherings including talking circles, sweats, movie nights, and opportunities to sing and dance. “We still want to provide safety,” Nanamkin says. “A lot of people still have worries and fear and grief, and they never dealt with it. And we’ve never been able to congregate, and now we’re finally able to a little bit.”
Other events included convening small groups to learn about gathering — and hunting and fishing for — traditional foods, including the plants needed for medicines. Nanamkin conducted a series of cultural resiliency classes to spread the knowledge, he says, “as many homes have been without these foods, medicines, and teachings since COVID struck our area hard.”
In addition, because fires on the reservation caused many residents to lose electricity for periods of time, the group recently hosted a hands-on food preservation class about how to can and preserve traditional natural foods including salmon and berries. The class was attended by all ages. With no adult nutrition or diabetes prevention programs available in the community, and the complete absence of any organic food at tribal stores, Nanamkin says the group will also keep promoting healthy, organic foods by giving away the food they grow in their garden.
Recently, Konbit, an organization working to enable food sovereignty and equity around the globe, began constructing a state-of-the-art greenhouse in the White Buffalo Meadows Housing Development in Nespelem which will allow Young Warriors Society members to grow food and plant medicines year-round for the first time, blending traditional food production with new technologies and moving the community closer to food sovereignty and long-term sustainability.
Nanamkin, who will serve in an advisory role for the greenhouse, looks forward to using it as an educational tool as well, and he wants it to be accessible to elders in the community along with the youth. “We have very few elders that are left who know traditional wisdom and knowledge,” Nanamkin says. “And so right now it is very vital that we create this little circle that bridges to the youth in our schools, to our boys and girls clubs and our community.”
The land-based education promoted by Nanamkin and the Young Warrior Society continues to attract outside interest. In 2020, Nanamkin presented a TEDx Talk, and recently members of the team presented at the Washington State Indian Education Association conference and the Washington State STEM Summit.
Whatever the years ahead bring, the Young Warrior Society will keep serving its community and building bridges across generations in order to build resilience and hope for the future. “We just have a love for people. We have a love for culture,” Nanamkin says. “Our culture provided the medicines in food and the teachings and the prayers, the spiritual foundation, that have gotten us through this time.”
Conclusion
“If there is a Spruce tree standing in the forest, and next to it is a Cedar, and there is Hemlock there as well… if one of them falls down then all of their roots get weaker. That is the same way it is with us.” - Delores Churchill, Haida Weaver
“We potlatch to recognize marriage, to recognize birth of children, to recognize a mourning or passing of someone in our community. But within the larger sense of potlatch, it’s a ritual gifting to people, knowing that gift will be returned back to you. It’s all about bringing something to your community and giving back. To see us come together in that strength, that bonding, that family, that community, it really empowers me as an Indigenous person and empowers me to continue this work. It’s strengthening our communities and reinforcing our sovereignty. It is changing our lives.” - Potlatch Fund Board President Charlotte Coté
The First Nations people of Canada have a beautiful culture marked with a deep history of generosity and philanthropy. Their beliefs are rooted in the idea that the universe alone owns everything. Gift giving is prominent in their society and is illustrated greatly through the ceremony of the Potlatch. Potlatch is about the formation of a culture and societal bond. It serves a dual purpose of both a ceremonial ritual and a means of circulating wealth among Indigenous peoples. Today, the spirit of the potlatch – of philanthropy in its most traditional form – continues to thrive in every Native community, First Nation people measure wealth not in possessions but in generosity and they possess the innate capacities and wisdom needed for innovation, healing, and protection of Native ways of life. They know how to connect and collaborate to sustain Native sovereignty. Native peoples, if given opportunities and resources, will find a way to come together to address and solve society’s biggest challenges. Celebrating the power of giving has always been a foundation of Native culture. Indigenous peoples have long understood that building a strong community depends upon the willingness of its members to share of themselves.
As Einstein once said, "we can't solve today's problems with yesterday's consciousness." Perhaps the potlatch traditions can help transform philanthropic engagement in this regard, decolonize wealth, and help change philanthropy to be more equitable, more inclusive, and more just. We may apply the spirit of these traditions to develop new approaches to philanthropy, to dream, and to build a better world.
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