07/10/2026
There was a time when giving away your wealth could get you arrested. 🔥 For the nations of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the potlatch was the heart of society, and for sixty six years it was against the law.
A potlatch is a great ceremonial gathering where a host marks a birth, a marriage, a death or the raising of a totem by giving away enormous amounts of food, blankets and treasure. Status came not from what you kept but from what you gave. To colonial governments this made no sense and threatened their control, so Canada banned the potlatch in 1885. In 1921 a famous potlatch held by Dan Cranmer was raided, and dozens of people were arrested while their masks and regalia were seized and scattered to museums.
The ban was finally lifted in 1951, but the ceremonies had never truly stopped. They had gone quiet and continued in private, kept alive out of sight. Today the potlatch is openly practiced again, and much of that confiscated regalia has been brought home to cultural centers built by the very families it was taken from. 🪶
What is a tradition in your family that survived because someone refused to let it die?
